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Most modern computers provide large number of general-purpose registers and few mem access instructions, why?

Question by Chris: Most modern computers provide large number of general-purpose registers and few mem access instructions, why?
Full Question: Most modern computers provide a large number of general-purpose registers and very few memory access instructions. Most instructions use these registers to hold data instead of
memory. Explain clearly and coherently the advantages to such an architecture?

Best answer:

Answer by Chip
Put simply: speed. The computer doesn’t have to waste time looking up data in memory if it already has the data sitting right there in the register.

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