02/11/2016

What is RISC and CISC Architecture ? Edgefxkits

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What is RISC and CISC Architecture with

Advantages and Disadvantages
Central Processing Unit Architecture operates the
capacity to work from Instruction Set Architecture to
where it was designed. The architectural designs of CPU
are RISC (Reduced instruction set computing) and CISC
(Complex instruction set computing). CISC has the ability
to execute addressing modes or multi-step operations
within one instruction set. It is the design of the CPU
where one instruction performs many low-level operations.
For example, memory storage, an arithmetic operation
and loading from memory. RISC is a CPU design strategy
based on the insight that simplified instruction set gives
CISC and RISC

higher

performance

when

combined

with

microprocessor architecture which has the ability to

execute the instructions by using some microprocessor cycles per instruction.
This article discusses about the RISC and CISC architecture with suitable diagrams.
Hardware of the Intel is termed as Complex Instruction Set Computer (CISC)
Apple hardware is Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC).

What is RISC and CISC Architectures

Hardware designers invent numerous technologies & tools to implement the desired architecture in order to
fulfill these needs. Hardware architecture may be implemented to be either hardware specific or software
specific, but according to the application both are used in the required quantity. As far as the processor
hardware is concerned, there are 2 types of concepts to implement the processor hardware architecture.
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What is RISC and CISC Architecture ? Edgefxkits

First one is RISC and other is CISC.

CISC Architecture
The CISC approach attempts to minimize the number of instructions per program, sacrificing the number of
cycles per instruction. Computers based on the CISC architecture are designed to decrease the memory
cost. Because, the large programs need more storage, thus increasing the memory cost and large memory
becomes more expensive. To solve these problems, the number of instructions per program can be reduced
by embedding the number of operations in a single instruction, thereby making the instructions more complex.

CISC Architecture

MUL loads two values from the memory into separate registers in CISC.
CISC uses minimum possible instructions by implementing hardware and executes operations.
Instruction Set Architecture is a medium to permit communication between the programmer and the
hardware. Data execution part, copying of data, deleting or editing is the user commands used in the
microprocessor and with this microprocessor the Instruction set architecture is operated.
The main keywords used in the above Instruction Set Architecture are as below
Instruction Set: Group of instructions given to execute the program and they direct the computer by
manipulating the data. Instructions are in the form Opcode (operational code) and Operand. Where, opcode
is the instruction applied to load and store data, etc. The operand is a memory register where instruction
applied.
Addressing Modes: Addressing modes are the manner in the data is accessed. Depending upon the type
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What is RISC and CISC Architecture ? Edgefxkits

of instruction applied, addressing modes are of various types such as direct mode where straight data is
accessed or indirect mode where the location of the data is accessed. Processors having identical ISA may
be very different in organization. Processors with identical ISA and nearly identical organization is still not
nearly identical.
CPU performance is given by the fundamental law

Thus, CPU performance is dependent upon Instruction Count, CPI (Cycles per instruction) and Clock cycle
time. And all three are affected by the instruction set architecture.

Instruction Count of the CPU

This underlines the importance of the instruction set architecture. There are two prevalent instruction set
architectures

Examples of CISC PROCESSORS

IBM 370/168 It was introduced in the year 1970. CISC design is a 32 bit processor and four 64-bit floating
point registers.
VAX 11/780 CISC design is a 32-bit processor and it supports many numbers of addressing modes and
machine instructions which is from Digital Equipment Corporation.
Intel 80486 It was launched in the year 1989 and it is a CISC processor, which has instructions varying
lengths from 1 to 11 and it will have 235 instructions.

CHARACTERISTICS OF CISC ARCHITECTURE

Instruction-decoding logic will be Complex.
One instruction is required to support multiple addressing modes.
Less chip space is enough for general purpose registers for the instructions that are 0operated directly
on memory.
Various CISC designs are set up two special registers for the stack pointer, handling interrupts, etc.
MUL is referred to as a complex instruction and requires the programmer for storing functions.
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What is RISC and CISC Architecture ? Edgefxkits

RISC Architecture
RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) is used in portable devices due to its power efficiency. For
Example, Apple iPod and Nintendo DS. RISC is a type of microprocessor architecture that uses highlyoptimized set of instructions. RISC does the opposite, reducing the cycles per instruction at the cost of the
number of instructions per program Pipelining is one of the unique feature of RISC. It is performed by
overlapping the execution of several instructions in a pipeline fashion. It has a high performance advantage
over CISC.

RISC Architecture

RISC processors take simple instructions and are executed within a clock cycle

RISC ARCHITECTURE CHARACTERISTICS

Simple Instructions are used in RISC architecture.
RISC helps and supports few simple data types and synthesize complex data types.
RISC utilizes simple addressing modes and fixed length instructions for pipelining.
RISC permits any register to use in any context.
One Cycle Execution Time
The amount of work that a computer can perform is reduced by separating LOAD and STORE
instructions.
RISC contains Large Number of Registers in order to prevent various number of interactions with
memory.
In RISC, Pipelining is easy as the execution of all instructions will be done in a uniform interval of time
i.e. one click.
In RISC, more RAM is required to store assembly level instructions.
Reduced instructions need a less number of transistors in RISC.
RISC uses Harvard memory model means it is Harvard Architecture.
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What is RISC and CISC Architecture ? Edgefxkits

A compiler is used to perform the conversion operation means to convert a high-level language
statement into the code of its form.

RISC & CISC Comparison

Comparison between CISC & RISC

MUL instruction is divided into three instructions

LOAD moves data from the memory bank to a register
PROD finds product of two operands located within the registers
STORE moves data from a register to the memory banks
The main difference between RISC and CISC is the number of instructions and its complexity.

RISC Vs CISC

SEMANTIC GAP
Both RISC and CISC architectures have been developed as an attempt to cover the semantic gap.

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What is RISC and CISC Architecture ? Edgefxkits

Semantic Gap

With an objective of improving efficiency of software development, several powerful programming languages
have come up, viz., Ada, C, C++, Java, etc. They provide a high level of abstraction, conciseness and power.
By this evolution the semantic gap grows. To enable efficient compilation of high level language programs,
CISC and RISC designs are the two options.
CISC designs involve very complex architectures, including a large number of instructions and addressing
modes, whereas RISC designs involve simplified instruction set and adapt it to the real requirements of user
programs.

CISC and RISC Design

Multiplication of two Numbers in Memory

If the main memory is divided into areas that are numbered from row1:column 1 to row 5 :column 4. The data
is loaded into one of four registers (A, B, C, or D). To find multiplication of two numbers- One stored in
location 1:3 and other stored in location 4:2 and store back result in 1:3.

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What is RISC and CISC Architecture ? Edgefxkits

Multiplication of Two Numbers

The Advantages and Disadvantages of RISC and CISC

The Advantages of RISC architecture
RISC(Reduced instruction set computing)architecture has a set of instructions, so high-level language
compilers can produce more efficient code
It allows freedom of using the space on microprocessors because of its simplicity.
Many RISC processors use the registers for passing arguments and holding the local variables.
RISC functions use only a few parameters, and the RISC processors cannot use the call instructions,
and therefore, use a fixed length instruction which is easy to pipeline.
The speed of the operation can be maximized and the execution time can be minimized.
Very less number of instructional formats, a few numbers of instructions and a few addressing modes
are needed.
The Disadvantages of RISC architecture
Mostly, the performance of the RISC processors depends on the programmer or compiler as the
knowledge of the compiler plays a vital role while changing the CISC code to a RISC code
While rearranging the CISC code to a RISC code, termed as a code expansion, will increase the size.
And, the quality of this code expansion will again depend on the compiler, and also on the machines
instruction set.
The first level cache of the RISC processors is also a disadvantage of the RISC, in which these
processors have large memory caches on the chip itself. For feeding the instructions, they require very
fast memory systems.
Advantages of CISC architecture
Microprogramming is easy assembly language to implement, and less expensive than hard wiring a
control unit.
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What is RISC and CISC Architecture ? Edgefxkits

The ease of microcoding new instructions allowed designers to make CISC machines upwardly
compatible:
As each instruction became more accomplished, fewer instructions could be used to implement a given
task.
Disadvantages of CISC architecture
The performance of the machine slows down due to the amount of clock time taken by different
instructions will be dissimilar
Only 20% of the existing instructions is used in a typical programming event, even though there are
various specialized instructions in reality which are not even used frequently.
The conditional codes are set by the CISC instructions as a side effect of each instruction which takes
time for this setting and, as the subsequent instruction changes the condition code bits so, the
compiler has to examine the condition code bits before this happens.
Thus, this article discusses about the RISC and CISC architectures; features of the RISC and CISC
processor architecture; advantages and drawbacks of RISC and CISC, and comparison between the RISC
and CISC architectures . For more information regarding the RISC and CISC architectures, or electrical and
electronics projects please visit the link www.edgefxkits.com. Here is a question for you, what are the latest
RISC and CISC processors?
Photo Credits:
RISC and CISC by blogspot
CISc and RISC Design by dickinson
RISC Vs CISC by ydcdn
CISC architecture by editsworld

About Tarun Agarwal

Tarun Agarwal is the Chief Operating Officer at Edgefx Technologies Pvt Ltd. He
has 8 years of experience in Customer Support, Operations and Administration.

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02/11/2016

What is RISC and CISC Architecture ? Edgefxkits

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What is RISC and CISC Architecture ? Edgefxkits

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