Rev. 1.10
18
November 04, 2019
Rev. 1.10
19
November 04, 2019
HT45F5Q-3
Battery Charger Flash MCU
HT45F5Q-3
Battery Charger Flash MCU
Fetch Inst. 1
1 MOV A,[12H]
2 CALL DELAY
3 CPL [12H]
4 :
5 :
6 DELAY: NOP
Execute Inst. 1
Fetch Inst. 2
Execute Inst. 2
Fetch Inst. 3
Flush Pipeline
Fetch Inst. 6
Execute Inst. 6
Fetch Inst. 7
Instruction Fetching
Program Counter
During program execution, the Program Counter is used to keep track of the address of the
next instruction to be executed. It is automatically incremented by one each time an instruction
is executed except for instructions, such as “JMP” or “CALL” that demand a jump to a non-
consecutive Program Memory address. Only the lower 8 bits, known as the Program Counter Low
Register, are directly addressable by the application program.
When executing instructions requiring jumps to non-consecutive addresses such as a jump
instruction, a subroutine call, interrupt or reset, etc., the microcontroller manages program control
by loading the required address into the Program Counter. For conditional skip instructions, once
the condition has been met, the next instruction, which has already been fetched during the present
instruction execution, is discarded and a dummy cycle takes its place while the correct instruction is
obtained.
Program Counter
Program Counter High Byte
PCL Register
PC11~PC8
PCL7~PCL0
Program Counter
The lower byte of the Program Counter, known as the Program Counter Low register or PCL, is
available for program control and is a readable and writeable register. By transferring data directly
into this register, a short program jump can be executed directly; however, as only this low byte
is available for manipulation, the jumps are limited to the present page of memory that is 256
locations. When such program jumps are executed it should also be noted that a dummy cycle
will be inserted. Manipulating the PCL register may cause program branching, so an extra cycle is
needed to pre-fetch.
Stack
This is a special part of the memory which is used to save the contents of the Program Counter
only. The stack is organized into 6 levels and neither part of the data nor part of the program space,
and is neither readable nor writeable. The activated level is indexed by the Stack Pointer, and is
neither readable nor writeable. At a subroutine call or interrupt acknowledge signal, the contents of
the Program Counter are pushed onto the stack. At the end of a subroutine or an interrupt routine,
signaled by a return instruction, RET or RETI, the Program Counter is restored to its previous value
from the stack. After a device reset, the Stack Pointer will point to the top of the stack.
If the stack is full and an enabled interrupt takes place, the interrupt request flag will be recorded but
the acknowledge signal will be inhibited. When the Stack Pointer is decremented, by RET or RETI,
the interrupt will be serviced. This feature prevents stack overflow allowing the programmer to use
the structure more easily. However, when the stack is full, a CALL subroutine instruction can still
be executed which will result in a stack overflow. Precautions should be taken to avoid such cases
which might cause unpredictable program branching.
