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Digital Equipment Corporation, also known as DEC〔"DEC used by Digital itself:" ''PDP11 Processor Handbook'' (1973): page 8, "DEC, PDP, UNIBUS are registered trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation;" page 1-4, "Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) designs and manufactures many of the peripheral devices offered with PDP-11's. As a designer and manufacturer of peripherals, DEC can offer extremely reliable equipment... The LA30 DECwriter, a totally DEC-designed and built teleprinter, can serve as an alternative to the Teletype."〕 and using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. It was a leading vendor of computer systems, including computers, software, and peripherals, and its PDP and successor VAX products were the most successful of all minicomputers in terms of sales. From 1957 until 1992 its headquarters were located in a former wool mill in Maynard, Massachusetts (since renamed Clock Tower Place and now home to multiple companies). DEC was acquired in June 1998 by Compaq, which subsequently merged with Hewlett-Packard in May 2002. Some parts of DEC, notably the compiler business and the Hudson, Massachusetts facility, were sold to Intel. Digital Equipment Corporation should not be confused with the unrelated companies Digital Research, Inc or Western Digital, although the latter once manufactured the LSI-11 chipsets used in DEC's low end PDP-11/03 computers. ==Overview== Initially focusing on the small end of the computer market allowed DEC to grow without its potential competitors making serious efforts to compete with them. Their PDP series of machines became popular in the 1960s, especially the PDP-8, widely considered to be the first successful minicomputer. Looking to simplify and update their line, DEC replaced most of their smaller machines with the PDP-11 in 1970, eventually selling over 600,000 units and cementing DECs position in the industry. Originally designed as a follow-on to the PDP-11, DEC's VAX-11 series was the first widely used 32-bit minicomputer, sometimes referred to as "superminis". These were able to compete in many roles with larger mainframe computers, such as the IBM System/370. The VAX was a best-seller, with over 400,000 sold, and its sales through the 1980s propelled the company into the second largest in the industry. At its peak, DEC was the second largest employer in Massachusetts, second only to the state government. 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, extremely high asking prices〔(Alpha: The History in Facts and Comments - The Collapse of DEC ). Alasir.com. Retrieved on 2013-07-17.〕 were outsold by lower priced x86 chips from Intel and clones such as AMD. The company was acquired in June 1998 by Compaq, in what was at that time the largest merger in the history of the computer industry. At the time, Compaq was focused on the enterprise market and had recently purchased several other large vendors. DEC was a major player overseas where Compaq had less presence. However, Compaq had little idea what to do with its acquisitions, and soon found itself in financial difficulty of its own. The company subsequently merged with Hewlett-Packard in May 2002. some of DEC's product lines were still produced under the HP name. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Digital Equipment Corporation」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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