PIC Microcontroller - Core Architecture

Core Architecture

The PIC architecture is characterized by its multiple attributes:

• Separate code and data spaces (Harvard architecture).
• A small number of fixed length instructions
• Most instructions are single cycle execution (2 clock cycles, or 4 clock cycles in 8-bit models), with one delay cycle on branches and skips
• One accumulator (W0), the use of which (as source operand) is implied (i.e. is not encoded in the opcode)
• All RAM locations function as registers as both source and/or destination of math and other functions.
• A hardware stack for storing return addresses
• A fairly small amount of addressable data space (typically 256 bytes), extended through banking
• Data space mapped CPU, port, and peripheral registers
• The program counter is also mapped into the data space and writable (this is used to implement indirect jumps).

There is no distinction between memory space and register space because the RAM serves the job of both memory and registers, and the RAM is usually just referred to as the register file or simply as the registers.