As noted RISC and CISC is a pretty bleary line these days in complex microprocessor. For embedded Micro's this is not so true.

The MSP430 is touted as a RISC processor and it's few instruction "formats" seem to bear out this description but it seems to me to just be more "orthangnal" like the old PDP-11 was (and 68000 for that matter) a very CISC architecture.

I have always preferred the micro-codes vs. hardwire logic as my personal divide between RISC and CISC but even this is obscurred by large instruction word architectures.

Of note, back in the days when RISC was entering into use for "frames" and "mini's", benchmarks were always being presented showing micro performance across a variety of executing code examples.

A RISC always was number one but of interest a CISC would place number two. What made me laugh was the number one RISC would change across benchmarks but the CISC was the same across benchmarks. Would seem that this CISC was a better choice for gen. purpose use.

Today, you need pick the best micro for your specific needs and you can ignore the CISC/RISC issue altogether.

regards,
p