This document will endeavour to explain the process of the instruction execution cycle. Should the reader wish to refer to additional background data from which the majority of the information contained in this document has been sourced, please refer to the section titled Biographical Information . To steamline the learning process, a number of very resourcefull web sites have been included in the Hot Links section of this document. Its function is to execute programs which are stored in memory. This process continues until they are told to stop.
All computers have an instruction execution cycle.
In an improved instruction execution cycle, we can introduce a third cycle known as the interrupt cycle . Figure 2 illustrates how the interrupt cycle fits into the overall cycle. IR PC incremented After the CPU has finished fetching an instruction, the CU checks the contents of the IR and determines which type of execution is to be carried out next. This process is known as the decoding phase. The instruction is now ready for the execution cycle.