An instruction cycle (sometimes called fetch-and-execute cycle, fetch-decode-execute cycle, or FDX) is the basic operation cycle of a computer. It is the process by which a computer retrieves a program instruction from its memory, determines what actions the instruction requires, and carries out those actions. This cycle is repeated continuously by the central processing unit (CPU), from bootup to when the computer is shut down.
Read more about Instruction Cycle: Circuits Used, Initiating The Cycle, Fetch Cycle, Decode, Read The Effective Address, Execute Cycle, The Fetch-Execute Cycle in Transfer Notation
Famous quotes containing the words instruction and/or cycle:
“I turn my gaze
Back to the instruction manual which has made me dream of
Guadalajara.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The cycle of the machine is now coming to an end. Man has learned much in the hard discipline and the shrewd, unflinching grasp of practical possibilities that the machine has provided in the last three centuries: but we can no more continue to live in the world of the machine than we could live successfully on the barren surface of the moon.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)