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Popular processor designs can be broadly divided into two categories: Complex Instruction Set Computers (CISC) and Reduced Instruction Set Computers (RISC). The dominant processor in the PC market, Pentium, belongs to the CISC category. However, the recent trend is to use the RISC designs. Even Intel has moved from CISC to RISC design for their 64-bit processor. RISC vs. CISC: What is the differences?

The processor understands only the machine language, whose instructions consist of strings of 1s and 0s. Machine language is closely related to the assembly language. We prefer to use the assembly language rather than the machine language. Programming in the assembly language also requires knowledge about the processor architecture. Assembly language programming is referred to low-level programming because each assembly language instruction performs a much lower-level task compared to an instruction in a high-level language. Assembly language instructions are processor specification dependents. For example, a program written in the Intel assembly language cannot be executed on the PowerPC processor.