16-bit CPU Emulator (Learning Project)

This project is my attempt to understand how a CPU works internally by building a simple 16-bit CPU emulator in C.

Currently implemented:

• CPU structure (cpu.h)
• 8 general purpose registers
• Program Counter (PC)
• Stack Pointer (SP)
• CPU flags (Zero, Negative, Overflow)
• 64 KB memory
• Cycle counter

CPU Structure

The CPU currently contains:

• Registers – 8 registers (R0–R7) storing 16-bit values
• Program Counter (PC) – points to the next instruction
• Stack Pointer (SP) – tracks the stack location in memory
• Flags – status indicators (Zero, Negative, Overflow)
• Memory – 64 KB byte-addressable memory
• Cycles – counts number of executed instructions

Learning Source

This project is being built while learning from the following repository:

https://github.com/vixhal-baraiya/16bit-cpu

The implementation here is written by me for learning purposes while studying how CPU emulators work.

Next Steps

Planned components:

• ALU implementation
• Memory read/write functions
• Instruction format
• CPU execution cycle (Fetch–Decode–Execute)
• Simple assembler