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program counter

The register that holds the address of the next instruction to run; called the instruction pointer (rip) on x86-64.

The program counter (PC; rip on x86-64) holds the address of the instruction being fetched; it advances past each instruction unless a branch writes it.

Examples

  • On ARM64, after an instruction at 0x1000 that doesn't jump, the program counter becomes 0x1004.

See also

fetch-decode-execute cycle
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