Everhart, Glenn
From:	Terry C. Shannon [shannon@world.std.com]
Sent:	Thursday, June 18, 1998 1:04 PM
To:	Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com
Subject:	Re: It's official.  DEC is no more.
Peter Kaiser wrote:
> 
> Steve Simmons wrote:
> 
> > In the late 80's, many of the smarter powers at DEC (me excluded)
> > understood that RISC had a better long term viability than the VAX.
> 
> DEC (it wasn't yet "Digital") was already exploring RISC at least as early
> as 1982, because the people who knew most about hardware architecture in
> DEC were well aware that the VAX architecture would run out of steam, and
> they wanted not to be caught short.

Yup. I think they booted TITAN somewhere around 1983. Built about 50 of
these 12-MIPS UNIX-only boxes. TITAN never saw the light of day because
it wouldn't run VMS and because it was composed of nonstandard-sized
boards that would have been tres expensive to produce.

Then there was the SAFE (Simplified Architecture for Fast Execution)
project circa 1984. Got some decent code translation technology outta
that one, little else.

> 
> > In fact, Dave Cutler was driving that effort ...
> 
> Something of an exaggeration.  Cutler drove *his part* of the PRISM
> project, and other people did others.  There's plenty of credit to go
> around for both the successes and the ultimate failure of PRISM without
> exaggerating Cutler's role, but what Digital ended up doing technically
> with Alpha is a lot better than what it had in mind for PRISM, because the
> plans for software for PRISM were so elaborate and complex -- if
> technically sweet -- that it seems unlikely to me Digital would have
> survived them even as long as it did survive.  Basically all the software
> was going to be created from scratch, including an "unencumbered"
> (license-free) UNIX.


What's more, PRISM was scalar-vector, whilst Alpha is superscalar. Seems
that the bloom came off the vector rose by 1988 or so, when PRISM's fate
was sealed.

Which may be just as well... there were plans for a 32-bit CMOS
microPRISM (which was prototyped) and a 64-bit ECL-based big brother
(which was not).

> 
> Windows NT is the descendant of the part of the PRISM software plans that
> came from VMS, and for that Cutler is responsible.

Yup. MICA. A damned shame that Digital's lawyers didn't manage to eke
out anything more than an alliance from MisterBill. T'would be nice if
DEC received royalties from every copy of WNT shipped by u$oft.


Terry Shannon