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In a simple central processing unit (CPU), the PC is a digital counter (which is the origin of the term "program counter") that may be one of several hardware registers. The instruction cycle [ 7] begins with a fetch, in which the CPU places the value of the PC on the address bus to send it to the memory. The memory responds by sending the ...
The program counter is typically set to a hard coded value when the CPU is first powered on, and will hence execute whatever machine code happens to be at this address. Similarly, the program counter can be set to execute whatever machine code is at some arbitrary address, even if this is not valid machine code.
Control flow. v. t. e. In computer science, control flow (or flow of control) is the order in which individual statements, instructions or function calls of an imperative program are executed or evaluated. The emphasis on explicit control flow distinguishes an imperative programming language from a declarative programming language.
A counter machine or counter automaton is an abstract machine used in a formal logic and theoretical computer science to model computation. It is the most primitive of the four types of register machines. A counter machine comprises a set of one or more unbounded registers, each of which can hold a single non-negative integer, and a list of ...
Call stack. In computer science, a call stack is a stack data structure that stores information about the active subroutines of a computer program. This type of stack is also known as an execution stack, program stack, control stack, run-time stack, or machine stack, and is often shortened to simply " the stack ".
Instruction register. In computing, the instruction register ( IR) or current instruction register ( CIR) is the part of a CPU 's control unit that holds the instruction currently being executed or decoded. [1] In simple processors, each instruction to be executed is loaded into the instruction register, which holds it while it is decoded ...
Unnamed numerical constants. [] The term magic number or magic constant refers to the anti-pattern of using numbers directly in source code. This has been referred to as breaking one of the oldest rules of programming, dating back to the COBOL, FORTRAN and PL/1 manuals of the 1960s. [ 1 ] The use of unnamed magic numbers in code obscures the ...
This article describes the calling conventions used when programming x86 architecture microprocessors . Calling conventions describe the interface of called code: The order in which atomic (scalar) parameters, or individual parts of a complex parameter, are allocated. How parameters are passed (pushed on the stack, placed in registers, or a mix ...