Characteristic of RISC –
1. Simpler instruction, hence simple instruction decoding.
2. Instruction comes undersize of one word.
3. Instruction takes a single clock cycle to get executed.
4. More general-purpose registers.
5. Simple Addressing Modes.
6. Fewer Data types.
7. A pipeline can be achieved.
Example of RISC: ARM, PA-RISC, Power Architecture, Alpha, AVR, ARC and the SPARC.
Characteristic of CISC –
1. Complex instruction, hence complex instruction decoding.
2. Instructions are larger than one-word size.
3. Instruction may take more than a single clock cycle to get executed.
4. Less number of general-purpose registers as operations get performed in memory
itself.
5. Complex Addressing Modes.
6. More Data types.
Examples of CISC: VAX, Motorola 68000 family, System/360, AMD and the Intel x86 CPUs.
Difference between RISC and CISC
RISC CISC
Focus on software Focus on hardware
Uses both hardwired and microprogrammed
Uses only Hardwired control unit control unit
Transistors are used for storing complex
Transistors are used for more registers Instructions
Fixed sized instructions Variable sized instructions
Can perform only Register to Register Can perform REG to REG or REG to MEM or
Arithmetic operations MEM to MEM
RISC CISC
Requires more number of registers Requires less number of registers
Code size is large Code size is small
An instruction executed in a single clock
cycle Instruction takes more than one clock cycle
Instructions are larger than the size of one
An instruction fit in one word. word
Simple and limited addressing modes. Complex and more addressing modes.
