instruction cycle

CPU in Action: The Hypothetical Processor and the Fundamentals of Assembly

2026-04-21·5021 words·24 mins

Computer Architecture CPU Assembly instruction cycle hardware

A hypothetical 12-bit processor with 15 instructions serves as a model for following the complete instruction cycle. We execute LDA and ADD register by register, encode instructions in hexadecimal, and write assembly programs with branches and loops.

CPU: Components, Instruction Cycle, and What Happens Inside the Processor

2026-04-16·3934 words·19 mins

Computer Architecture CPU instruction cycle processor hardware CISC RISC

A 2 GHz processor can execute more instructions per second than a 3 GHz one. To understand why, we open up the CPU: ALU, control unit, registers, flags, decoder, and clock, along with the microevents of the fetch cycle in formal notation.

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