Page "Digital Equipment Corporation" Paragraph 4

The rapid rise of the business microcomputer in the late 1980s, and especially the introduction of powerful 32-bit systems in the 1990s, quickly eroded the value of DEC's systems.

DEC's last major attempt to find a space in the rapidly changing market was the DEC Alpha 64-bit RISC processor architecture.

DEC initially started work on Alpha as a way to re-implement their VAX series, but also employed it in a range of high-performance workstations.

Although the Alpha processor family met both of these goals, and, for most of its lifetime, was the fastest processor family on the market, it did little to affect the bottom line or repair the company's status.