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 ...

A new study comparing the Intel X86, the ARM and MIPS CPUs finds that microarchitecture is more important than instruction set architecture, RISC or CISC. If you are one of the few hardware or ...

Remember how I said that Moore's Law is "the full-employment act for computer pundits"? In the smaller niche of microprocessor journalism, there used to be another topic that was always good for a ...

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 ...

Ten years ago, I waded into the then-raging “Mac vs. PC” wars with a lengthy treatise on “RISC vs. CISC: the Post-RISC Era.” In the conclusion to that article, I declared the “RISC vs. CISC” debate ...

At WWDC, Apple announced a radical change to its computers. The company is dropping Intel as its CPU provider, and will be transitioning its laptops and desktops to custom Apple-designed chips over ...

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 ...