The First RISC Chip

Hewlett-Packard’s first use of reduced instruction set computing (RISC) required the company’s biggest R&D project ever to that point. Codenamed Spectrum and released under the name Precision Architecture, the technology launched in Hewlett-Packard’s established factory, business and engineering computer lines all at once. Precision Architecture would prove a watershed in the commercialization of RISC technology, which up till then had been largely relegated to research and experimentation.

Watch an Inside the Vault video about RISC technology.