Section 6.6: Condition Codes (Frame 3)                     [prev][home][next]

The overflow bit is the hardest to understand, since it is the exclusive or of the final carry out (the C bit) and the carry out of the second to last bit. Another way to compute this is to note that overflow could only occur if both addends had the same sign. If the N bit of the result is different from the sign of the addends, then overflow has resulted. It is possible to show that these two conditions are equivalent.