Try to investigate the differences between the x86 and ARM processor families (or x86 and the Apple M1), and you'll see the acronyms CISC and RISC. It's a common way to frame the discussion, but not a ...

Some of the articles online are framing this as a CISC-versus-RISC battle, but that's an outdated comparison. The "classic" formulation of the x86 versus ARM debate goes back to two different methods ...

Prompted by the chipmaker's announcement of the SSE5 instruction-set extensions, Glaskowsky analyzes the ultimate outcome to this old controversy. Peter N. Glaskowsky is a computer architect in ...

RISC vs. CISC wars raged in the 1980s when chip area and processor design complexity were the primary constraints and desktops and servers exclusively dominated the computing landscape. Today, energy ...

A computer processor uses a so-called Instruction Set Architecture to talk with the world outside of its own circuitry. This ISA consists of a number of instructions, which essentially define the ...

In my post The Start of the Arm Era I said that it feels like something significant is changing. There's something Arm-y in the air. Suddenly Arm is faster than all x86 processors except the highest ...

In my first blog, we examined gave the historical context of the instruction set battles of ARM and x86, covering the RISC-CISC Wars in the PrePC Era and the PC Era. This blog covers Round 3, the ...

I was just wanting to know if anyone can tell me if the new athlon mp and xp's are risc chips or if they went to cisc. I know the older AMD chips were all RISC, but not sure of the newer ones. When ...