Back to marketplace

The differences between and uses of CISC and RISC processors.

No description yet. This curated deck is ready for daily study.

Total cards: 7•Content version: v4•Public deck•Updated: 8/1/2026

Card preview (7)

#1
Front (Question)

What does RISC stand for?

Back (Answer)

Reduced Instruction Set Computers

#2
Front (Question)

What is RISC?

Back (Answer)

• Small instruction set - Each instruction is approximately one line of machine code and takes one clock cycle

#3
Front (Question)

What does CISC stand for?

Back (Answer)

Complex Instruction Set Computers

#4
Front (Question)

What is CISC?

Back (Answer)

• Large instruction set • Aim is to try and accomplish tasks in as few lines of assembly code as possible • Built into the hardware

#5
Front (Question)

One advantage of RISC compared to CISC

Back (Answer)

Pipelining is possible since each instruction takes one clock cycle

#6
Front (Question)

One advantage of CISC compared to RISC

Back (Answer)

Less RAM is required since code is shorter

#7
Front (Question)

Differences between CISC and RISC

Back (Answer)

• CISC is more complex / RISC is simpler • RISC takes one machine cycle / CISC takes many cycles to complete one instruction • RISC fixed number of bytes / CISC variable number