Computing · 1980

RISC

Fewer, simpler instructions, executed very fast.

IBM's 801, Berkeley RISC (David Patterson) and Stanford MIPS (John Hennessy) showed simple instruction sets could outperform complex ones. RISC ideas now underlie ARM, RISC-V and the internals of x86 chips.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 1

Microprocessor (Intel 4004) 1971

What it led to 2

ARM architecture 1985
RISC-V 2010

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Transistors per microprocessor Latest: 58.2B transistors (2021) Source: Our World in Data

Computation per constant dollar, 1850-2006 Latest: 7.3B million units of computer power per 2006 $ (2003) Source: Nordhaus 2007, Two Centuries of Productivity Growth in Computing, J. Econ. Hist. 67(1), Table 6