| Noun | 1. | complex instruction set computer - (computer science) a kind of computer architecture that has a large number of instructions hard coded into the CPU chip computer architecture, architecture - (computer science) the structure and organization of a computer's hardware or system software; "the architecture of a computer's system software" computer science, computing - the branch of engineering science that studies (with the aid of computers) computable processes and structures reduced instruction set computer, reduced instruction set computing, RISC - (computer science) a kind of computer architecture that has a relatively small set of computer instructions that it can perform |