CISC n RISC,

for more details on how they differ check out the notes in the computer science folder.

The CISC approach, hardware and software

• complex hardware

• fewer registers

• several clock cycles for some instructions

• less programming code

where are they most often used?

CISC is most often used in desktop and laptop computers whereas RISC is commonly used in smartphones and tablets.

The RISC approach

• simpler hardware

• many registers

• single clock cycle for an instruction

• more programming code needed.

RISC processors

• compiler has to do more work to translate high level code into machine code.

• More RAM is required to store the code

• Pipelining is possible since each instruction takes one clock cycle

CISC processors

• the compiler has less work to translate high level code into machine cade

• Less RAM is required since code is shorter

• many specialised instructions are made even though only a few of them are used

Multi