Top "Program-counter" questions

The program counter (PC), commonly called the instruction pointer (IP) in Intel x86 and Itanium microprocessors, and sometimes called the instruction address register (IAR), the instruction counter, or just part of the instruction sequencer, is a processor register that indicates where a computer is in its program sequence.

Program Counter and Instruction Register

Program counter holds the address of the instruction that should be executed next, while instruction register holds the actual instruction …

cpu-registers cpu-architecture program-counter
Why can't you set the instruction pointer directly?

The Wikipedia article about x86 assembly says that "the IP register cannot be accessed by the programmer directly." Directly means …

x86 cpu-registers program-counter
MIPS - JAL confusion: $ra = PC+4 or PC+8?

I'm having trouble understanding how the instruction jal works in the MIPS processor. My two questions are: a) What is …

mips program-counter
ARM Cortex M3 How do I determine the program counter value before a hard fault?

I have an embedded project using a STM32F103 (ARM Cortex M3), it is getting a occasionally getting hard fault …

embedded arm interrupt cortex-m3 program-counter