Short History of RISC

It is reasonable to look upon the early CRAY architectures, which strove to obtain high execution rates through the use of simple instructions, as the basis of RISC architectures. The concept was explored in a more general manner inside IBM with the 801 project (John Cocke and George Radin [HOP87], [SHR99]); this project—named after the building in which it was done—was finished in 1979, and its results were published in 1981. Similar studies at Stanford and Berkeley started in the early 1980s, and led respectively to the MIPS and SPARC architectures. The acronym RISC was created by the Berkeley team. The first commercial computers based on these concepts were marketed by start-ups Ridge and Pyramid, who introduced their products in (respectively) 1983 and 1985, followed by HP who introduced HP PA (Precision Architecture) in 1986. Sun’s introduction of SPARCbased systems in 1987, transitioning in an exemplary fashion from their 680x0-based product line, was instrumental in the acceptance of RISC concepts.

Source of Information :  Elsevier Server Architectures