A RISC and CISC Microprocessor Tale
Dominance of RISC and CISC processors have alternated through computing history. Why is that, and what will the future bring?
Apple is now transitioning to Apple Silicon chips which are based on ARM, a RISC type of microprocessor, unlike Intel and AMD chips which are CISC based. But haven’t we been here before? Who can forget that back in 2006, Apple computers used RISC processors called PowerPC before transitioning to Intel chips.
But if one goes a bit further back to 1994, Apple was then on Motorola 68k CISC microprocessors. Thus Apple has been jumping between RISC and CISC chips multiple times. How can we make any sense of this?
If RISC microprocessors are so great, why did all the big RISC workstation makers of the 1990s keel over and die?
Sun, Silicon Graphics and Acorn Archimedes, all RISC based workstations failed in the market and got steamrolled by Intel.
RISC processors such as DEC Alpha was also abandoned. PA-RISC by HP was also given up on.
