Similarly, an implementation of BLISS was developed for internal use only, in order to allow pre-existing VAX/VMS applications to be ported to MICA.
MICA would have featured ports or rewrites of many VAX/VMS layered products, including Rdb, VAXset, DECwindows, and most of the compilers available for VAX/VMS.
[15] When PRISM and MICA were cancelled, Dave Cutler left Digital for Microsoft, where he was put in charge of the development of what became known as Windows NT.
[2][16][17] In addition to the implementation of multiple operating system APIs on top of a common kernel (Win32, OS/2 and POSIX in NT's case) MICA and NT shared the separation of the kernel from the executive,[6] the use of an Object Manager as the abstraction for interfacing with operating system data structures,[18] and support for multithreading and symmetric multiprocessing.
[4] After the cancellation of PRISM, Digital began a project to produce a faster VAX implementation which could run VMS and provide comparable performance to its DECstation line of Unix systems.
[19] In a 2023 interview, Dave Cutler said of the project: "MICA was wildly ambitious, ... at the level of ambition of Multics.