Programming in a Nutshell Programming in a Nutshell Instruction-Fetch, Decode, Execute Cycle Program containing instructions and data loaded into memory. IP register is incremented so that it points to the next instrcution in memory. Decode unit sends a signal to the execution unit indicating the operation that is to be carried out.
Execution unit carries out the operation.
The instruction-fetch, decode, execute cycle repeats with the next instruction in memory and so on until an end instruction is encountered.