https://www.wired.com/1997/10/intel-dec-settle-alpha-chip-dispute/ https://www.wired.com/1997/10/intel-dec-settle-alpha-chip-di... This. Microsoft Windows NT

https://www.wired.com/1997/10/intel-dec-settle-alpha-chip-dispute/ https://www.wired.com/1997/10/intel-dec-settle-alpha-chip-di... This. Microsoft Windows NT and Wall Street were already embracing the successor to X86 (called MIPS) in anticipation of X86 hitting the same (CISC) architectural limits that DEC’s VAX had. Things did not look good for old Intel. The allegation was that when DEC shopped Alpha to Intel (who had the most advanced fabs behind DEC) looking for a second source chip supplier, Intel took a while and came back with a No, but then their all-but-dead X86 architecture suddenly appeared in a new gen chip called Pentium with Alpha’s tech. You can guess the rest if you weren’t around yet. [Commoditized PCs that ran the X86 version of Windows Server allowed Asian producers with near-slave labor to do to DEC what DEC had done, albeit with an entirely Western workforce, to mainframe manufacturers, to the point where Compaq was eventually able to buy what was left of once great DEC and put it to sleep —-along with any need for the MIPS version of Windows NT. Apple teamed up with IBM for a while with POWER PC, Sun flopped around with Thin Clients and Amiga/Atari murder-suicided, but there was no stopping Windows NT on Alpha-infused X86. Eventually, the ensuing economic chaos caused everyone to turn to free software everywhere they possibly could (as the theoretical communists like RMS lamented in their final vindication after so many decades in obscurity). When Apple got its second chance with the iPhone, the first thing it did was capture the manufacturing capacity in China to prevent a repeat of what had happened with the PC.] Kind’a puts a new perspective on Intel needing to use TSMC as AMD began promoting 7nm x86 chips. Footnote: The state of the art DEC chip fab (Hudson) that DEC made Intel buy was where DEC had taken the simple ARM architecture and put it on steroids (StrongARM) such that its eventual descendants live on today, even powering iPhone.