BRANCH MECHANISM FOR COMPUTER SYSTEM

A mechanism for fully executing a branch-on-any-bit-in-any-register instruction within one machine cycle of the host computing system. The invention has particular utility in a primitive instruction set computing system wherein a majority of its primitive instruction set is executable within such a single machine cycle. Means are provided whereby a branch decision may be made not only on a specified bit in the condition register, but on any bit in any of the general purpose registers (30) provided in the system CPU. Means are also provided for saving a given configuration of the condition register in the general purpose registers for later use in subsequent branch-on-bit operations.