11.2.1 Clocking Scheme

The microcontroller clock input, whether from an internal or external source, is internally divided by four to generate four non-overlapping quadrature clocks (Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4). Internally, the Program Counter is incremented on every Q1; the instruction is fetched from the program memory and latched into the instruction register during Q4. The instruction is decoded and executed during the following Q1 through Q4. The clocks and instruction execution flow are shown in the following figure.