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MIPS is sort of the original RISC, since one of the two originators of the RISC concept (Hennessy) was a founder of MIPS Computer Systems in 1984. POWER is also

MIPS is sort of the original RISC, since one of the two originators of the RISC concept (Hennessy) was a founder of MIPS Computer Systems in 1984. POWER is also RISC, but basically doesn't have any traction beyond IBM itself. SPARC lives on only in radiation-hardened form for the European space agency. Various others never even achieved that level of commercial significance. So it's basically "less RISC than it used to be" Arm, and "more RISC than it used to be" x86. But there is one notable CISC still out there: IBM's mainframe z/Architecture. Might not sell a lot of units, but it's still pretty important commercially.

yellowapple 7y ago
> SPARC lives on only in radiation-hardened form for the European space agency. Worth noting that POWER similarly lives on in radiation-hardened form for NASA; the RAD750 (and its predecessor, the RAD3000) both have a long history of interplanetary use. MIPS also sees some use here, too; for example, the MIPS-based Mongoose-V is what New Horizons uses, and the KOMDIV-32 ostensibly is designed for Russian spacecraft use (but I don't know of any specific examples).