Also PC. A CPU register which holds the address of the next instruction to be executed. The program counter is incremented after each byte of each instruction is fetched.
This CPU register always contains the memory address where the next instruction to be performed by the CPU can be found. Its contents is copied into the MAR before an instruction is fetched from the main memory. While the instruction is being fetched, the Control Unit updates the contents of the PC so that it will again point to the next instruction to be performed.
a 16bit register that places addresses on the bus to retrieve information stored within a program.
The program counter (also called the instruction pointer, part of the instruction sequencer in some computers) is a register in a computer processor which indicates where the computer is in its instruction sequence. Depending on the details of the particular machine, it holds either the address of the instruction being executed, or the address of the next instruction to be executed. The program counter is automatically incremented for each instruction cycle so that instructions are normally retrieved sequentially from memory.