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Computer Hardware Terms, Glossary and Dictionary
instruction cycle The time period during which one instruction is fetched from memory and executed when a computer is given an instruction in machine language. There are typically four stages of an instruction cycle that the CPU carries out: 1) Fetch the instruction from memory. 2) "Decode" the instruction. 3) "Read the effective address" from memory if the instruction has an indirect address. 4) "Execute" the instruction.
Related Terms
instruction cycle
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