Editing Microprocessor (section)

===RISC===
{{Main|Reduced instruction set computer}}

In the mid-1980s to early 1990s, a crop of new high-performance reduced instruction set computer ([[RISC]]) microprocessors appeared, influenced by discrete RISC-like CPU designs such as the [[IBM 801]] and others. RISC microprocessors were initially used in special-purpose machines and [[Unix]] [[workstation]]s, but then gained wide acceptance in other roles.

The first commercial RISC microprocessor design was released in 1984, by [[MIPS Computer Systems]], the 32-bit [[R2000 (microprocessor)|R2000]] (the R1000 was not released). In 1986, HP released its first system with a [[PA-RISC]] CPU<!-- NOT microprocessor -->. In 1987, in the non-Unix [[Acorn computers]]' 32-bit, then cache-less, [[ARM2]]-based [[Acorn Archimedes]] became the first commercial success using the [[ARM architecture]], then known as Acorn RISC Machine (ARM); first silicon [[ARM1]] in 1985. The R3000 made the design truly practical, and the [[R4000]] introduced the world's first commercially available 64-bit RISC microprocessor. Competing projects would result in the IBM [[IBM POWER Instruction Set Architecture|POWER]] and [[Sun Microsystems|Sun]] [[SPARC]] architectures. Soon every major vendor was releasing a RISC design, including the [[AT&T CRISP]], [[AMD 29000]], [[Intel i860]] and [[Intel i960]], [[Motorola 88000]], [[DEC Alpha]].

In the late 1990s, only two 64-bit RISC architectures were still produced in volume for non-embedded applications: [[SPARC]] and [[Power ISA]], but as ARM has become increasingly powerful, in the early 2010s, it became the third RISC architecture in the general computing segment.