What is the NIP?

David A. Gatwood dgatwood at mvista.com
Sun Aug 15 11:32:29 EST 1999


On Sat, 14 Aug 1999, Brian K. Neidig wrote:

> I've looked throughout the code for a comment describing this, but
> couldn't find it.  What is the purpose of the NIP?  I think it is NOT
> QUITE the IP, but I don't know what it is supposed to be.  In one place
> I saw the NIP being set to the instruction before a branch instruction,
> but other things seem to be happening with this variable.

AFAIK, it's "next instruction pointer".  IOW, it points to whatever
instruction is supposed to be looked at by the processor next.  A branch
would thus change this, as I assume an interrupt would, but I'm not 100%
positive about that.


David


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