You can read a fascinating interview with the founder of RISC technology, John Cocke, by connecting to www.rs6000.ibm.com/resource/interviews. A good discussion of CISC versus RISC architectures is available at www.zdnet.com/pcmag/issues/1418/pcm00082.htm. In this PC Magazine article, Jeff Prosise discusses the following questions: Is a reduced instruction set chip better than a complex instruction set chip? What is the difference between RISC and CISC? What does a reduced instruction set mean, and are RISC chips really less complex than CISC chips?

Great Microprocessors of the Past and Present This Web page provides descriptions of numerous CPUs, beginning with the first CPU--Intel's 4004 from 1971--and ending with CPUs from the 1990s. Reading and comparing the descriptions of Intel's 80x86 (Pentium) chips and Motorola's 680x0 chips can help you understand the differences between CISC and RISC chips.