Everhart, Glenn
From:	Peter Kaiser [peter-kup.kaiser@ubs.com]
Sent:	Thursday, June 18, 1998 12:12 PM
To:	Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com
Subject:	Re: It's official.  DEC is no more.
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.

> 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.

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

___Pete
kaiser@acm.org