The case for the precision timed (PRET) machine

Patterson and Ditzel 12 did not invent reduced instruction set computers (RISC) in 1980. Earlier computers all had reduced instruction sets. Instead, they argued that trends in computer architecture had gotten off the sweet spot, and that by dropping back a few years and forking a new version of architectures, leveraging what had been learned, they could get better computers by employing simpler instruction sets.