This is a Register that stores the location of the next instruction to fetch. After every instruction fetch, PC is incremented by the wordsize of the processor.

Incrementing PC

PC is incremented from the ALU.

PC Requirements

  • 4-bytes aligned
  • MIPS can access any 8-byte memory from 0x00000000 to 0xffffffff
  • User memory limited to locations below 0x7fffffff
  • .text limited to locations below 0x00400000
  • .data limited to locations above 0x10010000