Instruction/Machine Cycle of stored-program computer - repeat all day
1. Fetch Instruction - read instruction pointed at by the program counter (PC) from memory into Instr. Reg. (IR)
2. Decode Instruction - figure out what kind of instruction was read
3. Fetch Operands - get operand values from the memory or registers
4. Execute Instruction - do some operation with the operands to get some result
5. Write Result - put the result into a register or in a memory location
(Note: Sometime during the above steps, the PC is updated to point to the next instruction.)