ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the research processor architectures, and the alternatives which were proposed to the complex instruction sets of the minicomputers. The Reduced Instruction Set Computer may have been born out of earlier ideas, but it came of age at Berkeley, and it is due to the research, persuasion and demonstration of the Berkeley team that it has grown into a major force in the world microprocessor market. In 1980, technology allowed a full 32-bit CPU to be built on one chip, and the minicomputer complex instruction sets were faithfully imitated by the microprocessor designers. The RISC project at Berkeley started from the observation that high level language compilers had difficulty making good use of complex instruction sets. The complex instruction set microprocessor is far from dead, but it has certainly lost the high ground in the battle for maximum performance.
