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When an instruction is sent to a CPU, that may take multiple clock cycles to complete, when does the CPU know that the instruction has finished and can start processing the next one? I'm mostly interested in RISC architectures for the simplicity, since CISC may contain complex microcode.
if one looks at pictures in old textbooks, the "program counter" gets incremented. you can read about the 'program counter' 'memory address register' memory buffer/data register'. address bus, data bus, control bus or control lines. – barlop – 2015-03-09T16:49:22.833
I think your confused by how instructions work. An instruction can't take multiple clock cycles. Now a series of instructions that make up a method is something else entirely. As for tracking the progress that's what the cache is for – Ramhound – 2014-03-09T01:13:48.490
Many RISC systems doesn't have multi-cycles instructions. Not having to keep track of multi-cycles instructions are part of what makes them much simpler than CISC. – Lie Ryan – 2014-03-09T01:16:51.347
Today's machines (even single core) are normally executing several instructions at once. You should look for resources on computer architecture (there sure are lots of lecture notes and other resources of the net). – vonbrand – 2014-03-09T02:47:56.480
3@Ramhound Of course an instruction can take multiple clock cycles. Multiplies typically take longer than adds, for example. – David Schwartz – 2014-03-09T02:54:37.070