A Complex Instruction Set Computer (CISC) supplies a large number of complex instructions at the assembly language level. Assembly language is a low-level computer programming language in which each statement corresponds to a single machine instruction. CISC instructions facilitate the extensive manipulation of low-level computational elements and events such as memory, binary arithmetic, and addressing. This particular architectural methodology requires smaller binary files (because each CISC command accomplishes so much, relatively speaking) but involves relatively slow execution of each individual instruction (because the processor must perform more binary manipulations to fulfill each instruction). The goal of the CISC architectural philosophy is to make microprocessors easy and flexible to program and to provide for more efficient memory use.

The CISC philosophy was unquestioned during the 1960s when the early computing machines such as the popular Digital Equipment Corporation PDP 11 family of...