The Prism/Alpha project was one long series of disasters. Prism was delayed because the spec kept changing and the architecture had to run on VLSI and ECL - whi

The Prism/Alpha project was one long series of disasters. Prism was delayed because the spec kept changing and the architecture had to run on VLSI and ECL - which was already a huge mistake. There was also resistance from the VAX partisans. So when samples arrived they were 2-3 years later than they should have been and MIPs had made some headway in the same space. DEC - actually Bob Supnik - decided that even though Prism was the better arch, MIPS products would bring in revenue more quickly. Which was true. But... then Prism was killed, which led to a mass walkout. The remains were resurrected a year later with some updates as Alpha. But by then it was too late for that particular market. Prism was a solid arch - some quirks, but nothing unworkable. And very, very fast. But it was a workstation-grade processor, not a mainstream PC-grade processor. DEC completely failed to understand the PC market, and it's not obvious what would have happened if Prism had survived. IMO it would have gone the way of MIPS anyway, because the workstation market was already being squeezed hard, and the PC and Mac markets had already made their choices. It might have had a good run against SPARC for a decade or so, but that would have been it.