alt Hacker News> The vertically integrated RISC/UNIX minicomputer companies were not on economically viable trajectories.
Well, actually one survived, and is making a fruity company quite happy, which also survived the 16 and 8 bit vertically integrated home computer companies.
The successful merge of NeXT and Apple, meant PC OEMs now dream of margins of those days hence why building desktops has become a niche market, everything is vertically integrated across laptops, tablets and phones and smart devices.
That alternative timeline means Intel would actually bother creating 64-bit x86 server chips instead of Itanium, because on their roadmap they were never expecting AMD to come out with an alternative.
Yes NeXT/Apple survive, although they commodity m68k CPUs, not quite your traditional UNIX minicomputer. Those were IBM, Sun, HP, DEC, maybe SGI. Designed their own ISAs, CPUs, interconnect fabric, 3 of them did their own silicon manufacturing.
One does still survive though, that's IBM's POWER / AIX. Still actively developed, though there is the feeling of 'when' rather than 'if' for them too.