| CISC | RISC |
|---|---|
| Diverse instruction sizes and formats | Limited number of instruction formats and sizes |
| Less use of registers | More use of registers |
| More addressing modes | Fewer addressing modes |
| Instructions execute in varying cycle times | Instructions execute in fixed cycle times |
| Difficult to pipeline (execution times vary) | Easier to pipeline |
CISC - Easy to make compiler, Smaller code size RISC - Easy to optimize compiler, Simpler hardware