The Program Counter (PC)

The Program Counter (PC) is a 2-byte address which tells the 8051 where the next instruction to execute is found in memory. When the 8051 is initialized PC always starts at 0000h and is incremented each time an instruction is executed. It is important to note that PC isn’t always incremented by one. Since some instructions require 2 or 3 bytes the PC will be incremented by 2 or 3 in these cases.