title: CISC mul vs RISC mul instruction
body: <p>I'm trying to understand the difference between CISC and RISC architecture. I read <a href="https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/risc/risccisc/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this</a> to understand the difference between CISC and RISC arhictecture but I'm confused.</p>
  <p>There is a sentence in the article like that</p>
  <blockquote>
  <p>MULT is what is known as a &quot;complex instruction.&quot; It operates
  directly on the computer's memory banks and does not require the
  programmer to explicitly call any loading or storing functions</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>after that explanation, I examined MUL operations in RISC and CISC.</p>
  <p>In CISC x86 architecture;</p>
  <pre><code>  mov ax, 5
    mov cx, 10
    mul cx
  </code></pre>
  <p>the result is stored in dx, ax registers.</p>
  <p>In RISC PowerPC arhictecure;</p>
  <pre><code>li r0, 5
  li r1, 10
  mul r2, r1, r0
  </code></pre>
  <p>According to <a href="https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/aix/7.2?topic=set-mul-multiply-instruction" rel="nofollow noreferrer">mul instruction explanation</a>, the result is stored r2 and mq registers.</p>
  <p>The instructions are same for two architectures in perspective of programmers.
  They are using same methodology for multiplying.  How come we say one is RISC other is CISC ?</p>