COMSATS INSTITUE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE – ASSIGNMENT 1
QUESTION
Describe the RISC & CISC architecture and compare their features ?
CISC ARCHITECTURE:
CISC was developed to make compiler development easier and simpler. The full form of
CISC is Complex Instruction Set Computer. They are chips that are easy to program that
makes efficient use of memory.
CISC eliminates the need for generating machine instructions to the processor. For
example, instead of having to make a compiler, write lengthy machine instructions to
calculate a square-root distance, a CISC processor offers a built-in ability to do this.
Many of the early computing machines were programmed in assembly language.
Computer memory was slow and expensive. CISC was commonly implemented in such
large computers, such as the PDP-11 and the DEC system.
FEATURES OF CISC ARCHITECTURE:
A large number of instructions.
Instruction-decoding logic will be complex.
Instructions for special tasks used infrequently.
A large variety of addressing modes
It offers variable-length instruction formats.
Instruction is larger than one-word size.
Instruction may take more than a single clock cycle to get executed.
Less number of general-purpose registers as operation get performed in memory
itself.
Various CISC designs are set up with two special registers for the stack pointer for
managing interrupts
RISC ARCHITECTURE:
RISC is designed to perform a smaller number of computer instruction. Hence, it can
operate at a higher speed. The full form of RISC is Reduced Instruction Set Computers. It
is a microprocessor that is designed to perform smaller number of computer instruction
so that it can operate at a higher speed.
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COMSATS INSTITUE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE – ASSIGNMENT 1
RISC instruction sets hold less than 100 instructions and use a fixed instruction format.
This method uses a few simple addressing modes that use a register-based instruction.
In this compiler development mechanism, LOAD/STORE is the only individual
instructions for accessing memory.
FEATURES OF RISC ARCHITECTURE:
Simpler instruction decoding
A number of general-purpose registers.
Simple Addressing Modes
Fewer Data types.
A pipeline can be achieved
One instruction per cycle
Register-to-register operations
Simple instruction format
Instruction execution would be faster
Smaller Programs
COMPARISON BETWEEN CISC AND RISC FEATURES:
In CISC, the instruction set is very large that can be used for complex operations
while in RISC the instruction set is reduced, and most of these instructions are
very primitive.
CISC computer's execution time is very high whereas RISC computer's execution
time is very less.
In CISC, code expansion is not a problem while in RISC code expansion may create
a problem.
In CISC, decoding of instructions is complex whereas, in RISC, the decoding of
instructions is simple.
CISC requires external memory for calculations, but RISC requires internal
memory for calculations.
CISC has only a single register set while RISC has multiple register sets.
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