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 ...

Prompted by the chipmaker's announcement of the SSE5 instruction-set extensions, Glaskowsky analyzes the ultimate outcome to this old controversy. Peter N. Glaskowsky is a computer architect in ...

One of the features of Ars Premier 2.0 is subscriber-only content such as live chats and articles. Tonight, we’re announcing our next Premier 2.0 feature, a retrospective on the past ten years of RISC ...

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 ...

The Mac's best quality: software A Pioneer Press piece opines that the best part of the Macintosh platform is elegant, well-designed software. "So what does Macintosh have going for it? The most ...

SAN JOSE–Looking to alter the embedded chip landscape, startup MemoryLogix Inc. took the Microprocessor Forum last week to unveil the company and disclose the development of a “586-based ...

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 ...

Recently, we launched Ars Premier 2.0, our new and improved subscriber program that offers some fantastic new benefits for subscribers. Tonight sees our second insider-only feature: a live, moderated ...

A new instruction set by the original creator of MIPS aims to reinvent the ultra-low power, high-efficiency processor -- and to do so with an architecture that's fundamentally open and available to ...

Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) is a set of instructions defined for the processor’s architecture. These are the instructions that the processor understands. It defines the hardware and software ...