How VLIWs Were Adopted as Digital Signal Processors

In an industry, where purported breakthroughs become fads and then rapidly fade away, very long instruction word (VLIW) technology has had a long and exceptionally successful life. Conceived by Joseph A. (Josh) Fisher more than 35 years ago,1 VLIW had limited commercial success in minicomputers and then was eclipsed by single-chip central processing units (CPUs)—the “killer micros.”