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 ...

[Michael Kohn] started programming on the Motorola 68000 architecture and then, for work reasons, moved over to the Intel x86 and was not exactly pleased by the latter chip’s perceived shortcomings.

The microcontroller sector is evolving in an exciting direction by providing designers with a growing menu of choices tailored to their performance and power requirements. Unlike the classic 1990s ...

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 ...

A new paper from the University of Wisconsin tackles the question of whether ARM or x86 is more power efficient with updated processors and results from China's Loongson processor. Does ISA still ...

A couple of years ago, Erik McClure (a Microsoft software developer, at the time) published a blog entitled RISC Is Fundamentally Unscalable. This blog was really quite interesting and made some very ...

An Apple job ad reveals that the company is exploring the use of RISC-V chips, an open-source processor tech that competes with the ARM architecture used for Apple’s A-series and M-series chips.

Intel is making a few key major foundry moves to bolster its IDM 2.0 strategy, such as setting up a massive $1 billion innovation fund to support both early-stage startups and established companies ...