By Gregory Li Class of 2025

CISC versus RISC: The Rift at the Heart of Modern Computer Design

Editor’s Note: The History Fellowship program offers students the opportunity to conduct college-level independent research on a historical topic of their choice, resulting in a substantial academic paper and oral presentation. Through guided discussions, structured support, and access to both on- and off-campus sources, students learn and apply the practices of professional historians.

On December 1, 2024, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger resigned in a surprise move that left the company scrambling to find a successor. During his tenure, from 2021 to 2024, Gelsinger led the company through one of its toughest downturns; Intel’s market value plummeted from $250 billion when he took over to a measly $100 billion today. Once a tech powerhouse, Intel now pales in comparison to AI giants like Nvidia and Microsoft. Its $100 billion valuation is a mere rounding error next to the trillion-dollar market values of its rivals. How did this happen? The answer to this, and many other broad shifts within the technology industry, lies in a decades-long ideological clash in computer architecture –– something that has foundationally molded the development of modern computer technologies.

The design blueprints for computers, also known as computer architecture, have been pivotal to the development of electronics since the dawn of the digital age. However, the evolution of computer architecture has not occurred in a vacuum. Free-market forces have acted as a crucible for innovation, spurring competition and rewarding superior designs. The rivalry between the Complex Instruction Set Computer (CISC) and Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) — a pair of fundamentally divergent philosophies in computer architecture — has epitomized this tension. This paper explores how visionary academics and researchers revolutionized the computing industry, the evolution of two rival philosophies in computer instruction architecture, and the enduring legacy it leaves in today’s computer hardware.

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