What Does Program Counter (PC) Mean?
A program counter (PC) is a CPU register in the computer processor which has the address of the next instruction to be executed from memory. It is a digital counter needed for faster execution of tasks as well as for tracking the current execution point.
Techopedia Explains Program Counter (PC)
All instructions as well as data in memory have a specific address. As each instruction is processed, the software application responsible updates the program counter with the upcoming instructions’ address which needs to be fetched. The program counter in turn passes this information to the memory address register as part of the execution cycle/standard fetch. The program counter increases the stored value by one as the next instruction is fetched. If the computer is reset or restarts, the program counter usually reverts to the value of zero.
