The acronym RISC (pronounced as risk), for reduced instruction set computer, represents a CPU design strategy emphasizing the insight that simplified instructions that "do less" may still provide for higher performance if this simplicity can be utilized to make instructions execute very quickly. Many proposals for a "precise" definition have been attempted, and the term is being slowly replaced by the more descriptive load-store architecture. Wel...
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The acronym RISC (pronounced as risk), for reduced instruction set computer, represents a CPU design strategy emphasizing the insight that simplified instructions that "do less" may still provide for higher performance if this simplicity can be utilized to make instructions execute very quickly. Many proposals for a "precise" definition have been attempted, and the term is being slowly replaced by the more descriptive load-store architecture. Well known RISC families include Alpha, ARC, ARM, AVR, MIPS, PA-RISC, Power Architecture (including PowerPC), SuperH, and SPARC.
Being an old idea, some aspects attributed to the first RISC-labeled designs (around 1975) include the observations that the memory restricted compilers of the time were often unable to take advantage of features intended to facilitate coding, and that complex addressing inherently takes many cycles to perform. It was argued that such functions would better be performed by sequences of simpler instructions, if this...
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