logoalt Hacker News

p_lyesterday at 10:16 PM0 repliesview on HN

I'd say RISC won, when you consider how "RISCy" x86 is[1] compared to the ur-CISCs (68k, VAX) that RISC projects were in opposition to.

[1] Not because of often-called "risc like" microcode engine, but because the most complex addressing mode on x86 usually decodes two microinstructions, and decodes in single cycle. In comparison VAX needed separate pipeline for instruction decoding.