Architectural state

The architectural state[1] is the part of the CPU which holds the state of a process. This is typically held in processor registers and includes:

• Control registers
  • Instruction flag registers (such as EFLAGS in x86)
  • Interrupt mask registers
  • Memory management unit registers
  • Status registers
• General purpose registers (such as AX, BX, CX, DX, etc. in x86)
  • Adder registers
  • Address registers
  • Counter registers
  • Index registers
  • Stack registers
  • String registers
• Pipeline registers, between stages of an instruction pipeline

This does not include actual computation units as an ALU for instance.

References

1. Dubois, Michael; Annavaram, Murali; Stenström, Per (2012). Parallel Computer Organization and Design (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 430. ISBN 978-0-521-88675-8.