The X 86 Microprocessors: Architecture, Programming and Interfacing (8086 to Pentium) 2nd Edition by Pearson

BASICS OF COMPUTER SYSTEMS 0-15

There exists a long history of controversy regarding which is better. The x86 archi-

tecture was based on the CISC philosophy, right from the beginning. By the time RISC

principles became popular and software development for RISC became established, the

x86 CISC processors had already carved a niche for themselves in the processor market.

So, even though the supporters of RISC were able to establish their point, most develop-

ers did not want to take the risk of switching over to an untested domain. However, most

of the newer processors used the RISC philosophy for their architectures – examples are

ARM, Power PC, Sun’s Sparc processors and the like. Many of them found their applica-

tions in the embedded processing ...