A complex instruction set computer (CISC, /ˈsɪsk/) is a computer where single instructions can execute several low-level operations (such as a load from memory, an arithmetic operation, and a memory store) and/or are capable of multi-step operations or addressing modes within single instructions. The term was retroactively coined in contrast to reduced instruction set computer (RISC).
Examples of CISC instruction set architectures are System/360 through z/Architecture, PDP-11, VAX, Motorola 68k, and x86.
Famous quotes containing the words complex, instruction and/or set:
“The money complex is the demonic, and the demonic is God’s ape; the money complex is therefore the heir to and substitute for the religious complex, an attempt to find God in things.”
—Norman O. Brown (b. 1913)
“The care of a house, the conduct of a home, the management of children, the instruction and government of servants, are as deserving of scientific treatment and scientific professors and lectureships as are the care of farms, the management of manure and crops, and the raising and care of stock.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“We Russians have assigned ourselves no other task in life but the cultivation of our own personalities, and when we’re barely past childhood, we set to work to cultivate them, those unfortunate personalities.”
—Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)