Minecraft wiki entry for Redstone_computers, associated text: For the MASIC Computer, the computer which we are building, has an 8-bit system, so that means each instruction on each slot of the stack memory will be 8 bits. The stack memory is the memory where any information can be stored and is on the RAM. There will be a counter, called the program counter, which increments by 1 every cycle. A cycle is the CPU fetching the instruction, decoding the instruction (finding out what to do with the instruction) and executing the instruction (doing what it tells it to do). Then it moves on to the next one by incrementing the program counter and reading the information at that location in the stack memory.