A related question is that of code density, but that depends on more factors than just on which raw arithmetic or bitwise ops you have available. For instance,

A related question is that of code density, but that depends on more factors than just on which raw arithmetic or bitwise ops you have available. For instance, having a greater number of registers can be a benefit for some algorithms. Then, how many bits are used to encode each instruction. There have been studies comparing code-density of common algorithms compiled to or hand-optimised for different instruction sets. For instance: <https://web.eece.maine.edu/~vweaver/papers/iccd09/ll_document.pdf https://web.eece.maine.edu/~vweaver/papers/iccd09/ll_documen...> In general, the top densest have been 2-address CISC ISAs such as Motorola 680x0 and x86 variants, followed by 2-address RISC for embedded processors such as Super-H, ARM Thumb and RISC-V's C-extension.