High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Berkeley RISC was one of two seminal research projects into RISC-based microprocessor design taking place under ARPA`s VLSI project. RISC was led by David Patterson at the University of California, Berkeley between 1980 and 1984, while the other was taking place only a short drive away at Stanford University under their MIPS effort starting in 1981 and running until 1984. Berkeley`s project was so successful that it became the name for all similar designs to follow, even the MIPS would become known as a "RISC processor". The RISC design was later commercialized as the SPARC processor.