CISC

Short for complex instruction set computer, CISC is a computer architecture where individual instructions carry out low-level operations like arithmetic, and moving data to and from memory. Single instructions within CISC can also execute multiple-step operations.

CISC chips support as many as two hundred instructions and contrast with RISC (reduced instruction set computing) chips, which generally have uniform instruction lengths and different methods for loading and storing data. Examples of computers that employ CISC architecture are microcontrollers and mainframes.

Computer acronyms, CPU terms, Hardware terms, RISC