Understanding RISC vs CISC: Comparing x86 and ARM Architectures

Welcome to our deep dive into the world of microprocessor architectures! In this video, we explore the key differences between RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) and CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computing) architectures, and how these paradigms shape the performance and efficiency of modern processors.

What You'll Learn:

The fundamental principles behind RISC and CISC architectures
How RISC’s simplicity and efficiency contrast with CISC’s complexity and functionality
A detailed comparison of x86 and ARM architectures
The strengths and use cases of x86 processors, commonly found in desktops and servers
The advantages of ARM processors in mobile and embedded devices due to their power efficiency
Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a student, or a professional in the field, this video will provide you with a clear understanding of how these different architectures impact the technology we use every day.

Wanna know about BITCOIN in depth check this out:

Proof of Work Explained:

Checkout more Tech Videos:

[Md.Rizwan.Molla]

music is too loud, btw great explanation and presentation thank you

[anuragkar]

This sums up the concept of RISC and CISC well enough.

Although, you mention that the use case of RISC architectures is limited to mobile and low power devices, so one assumes that RISC cannot perform as fast as CISC due to the simple instruction set and to back that understanding we see the trend of the processor industry till the last decade with RISC processors dominating the mobile market while CISC dominating the desktop market.

Still we find quite the contrary in recent times. The performance of the Apple M3 (RISC) is as good as (or even better) the Intel processors (CISC). And with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite coming in, the whole desktop industry (and Intel) may face an existential crisis because the performance and power consumption is insanely better.

The crucial thing to understand is that the RISC architecture allows scaling of the CPU pipeline very efficiently to execute more and more instructions in parallel (superscalar). This takes more transistors of course but the fabrication technology has made so much progress that putting in that many transistors in a small chip is possible.

CISC on the other hand cannot be scaled beyond a point due to its complexity. And the whole point of going CISC in the first place was to be able to do things in parallel in hardware using complex instructions, which can now be achieved with RISC pipelines (except for specialised applications were having CISC is better).

The leap in fabrication technology has allowed RISC to show off its true potential, which was otherwise dominated by CISC.

[shivasinha]

Very nice explanation. Can you please make videos thoroughly on these topics :-
1. Silicon chipset vs Graphene chipset vs Photonics chipset.
2. ASML EUV lithography vs CANON NI lithography.
3. INTEL fabrication vs SAMSUNG fabrication vs TSMC fabrication.
4. ARM architecture vs RISC-V architecture.

[niskarshdwivedi]

very nice explaination
Try to make your video more visually appealing and also a bit fast too.
btw its pretty good start
All the best

[dune]

background music is more louder than your voice, you should fix this...

[ApplePotato]

CISC and RISC lost its relevance when both decoded the ISA into much simpler micro-ops. In fact, on paper the only major difference between ARM and x86 CPUs are their decoders. Much of the internals looks very similar due to the similar optimization strategy used, like out of order execution, register renaming etc. Jim Keller even noted that AMD was stupid for cancelling the ARM K12 because it could have shared much of the same internals with Zen.

The main reason for x86 worst power consumption is mainly because of backwards compatibility. Having to support every instruction ever created have led to the x86 ISA to be very complex, along with 16bit and 32bit modes and stuff like MMX extension that nobody uses anymore. ARM will eventually lose out to RISC-V as well for the same reason, as RISC-V is newer with less legacy baggage.

[snapshuttre]

you have covered some points others don't, arm processors are power efficient and suitable for battery powred devices because they are soc, on the other hand x86 processors were never embraced for being an soc, they have made discrete componets even in laptops, and that's why they are power hungry and their battery life is low, making a good and powerful x86 soc probably can stand on par with arm soc. remember the ampere and nvdia made arm processors for server computers? yeah they aren't suitable for being battery powred as they also need discrete ram and gpu for their respectable work flows. so all comes down to soc vs discrete system, soc for simplier tasks & power efficiency and discrete system for more complex tasks & upgradability.

yes it's true by the nature of their architectures that, x86 can never be more power efficient than arm but can come close to it & arm can never be better than x86 in terms of raw performance but can also come close to it as well.

Thank you for the video.