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What's Going On With Alpha
Fernando Ribeiro Corrêa writes: "Richard Payne, Alpha Processor's Tech Support Manager, talks about
Alpha's Linux strategy, market competition with
Intel, Transmeta and its Alpha plans for the future."
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The Compaq CC compiler specific to Alpha is available for free for Linux. See the compaw web site for the details, sorry no link.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
EV6 CPU's are at .35um
.25um
.18um
EV67 CPU's are at
EV68 CPU's are at
The UP1100 and UP2000 systems from API are EV67's.
We have been running EV67's for some time now.
The UP1100 board/CPU combo runs quite nicely on a 300w power supply. The combo pulls around 90w.
EV68 based systems will be out in Q1 of 2001.
FWIW, I work at API.
What's my Karma Mr. Burns? "Excellent"
Alphas are useful for much more than doing the latest physics simulations. Do you realize the power of a software synthesizer running on one of these things? I wish they weren't so damn expensive; I could set up one hell of a digital audio/music workstation with one of these.
It wasn't funny after two posts, after 100 it just becomes annoying.
Traditionally the problem with the Nvidia cards was that it's video bios made some 32bit calls that wernt supported by the x86 bios emulator in SRM. Since SRM-5.8 has been released this problem has since been fixed. So the "only" thing holding back Nvidia support in X/DRI is for some folks to work on it's Xserver. FYI with regards to 3D acceleration DRI does work on Alpha now with the Voodoo 3. Glide3 has also been ported to 64bit and works.
--
www.alphalinux.org
www.alphalinux.org
Hmm, no offense but I think you are wrong. Last year Compaq earned more revenue on its RISC platforms (VMS, Tru64, NSK) than on all its x86 NT Server products. Almost $1.5billion more. Those RISC platforms also have a much higher profit margin than the Proliants.
Don't get me wrong, the Proliant is a strong platform, it has the unit volume for sure, but its not going to replace the Alpha.
I spent last week at the Compaq Enterprise Technical Symposium, and it was very enlightening. The place was overrun by Alpha users, distributors and VARS. A huge percentage of the course tracks were Tru64, OpenVMS or Linux on Alpha.
Compaq is a very different company than they were before the Digital buyout. They have alot more enterprise savvy and far superior engineering than the old Compaq did. In fact, they feel alot like the old robust, creative DEC of the 80's but with good marketing, smart management and a decent PC line.
I think that the PA-RISCS and SGI-MIPS platforms are in alot more danger of becoming extinct than the Alpha.
Heck if I were Sun I'd be brittin' shicks right about now. Compaq will have Sun in a market pincer next year with IA-64 coming up from the low end and Alpha pressing down from above.
Also, Compaq doesn't fab or market the Alpha. Compaq designs the chip and uses it in their systems. Samsung and IBM provide the fabs and API does the marketing for third party chip and board sales.
I browse with my threshold at 2 so I can't read my own comments :-)
No.
The Linux kernel has never been self-booting on Alpha. You are thinking of MILO, which is based loosely on the kernel sources and which provides BIOS emulation and PALcode for the kernel.
MILO itself is not self-booting. There was an experimental project to flash MILO, but it only worked on a few systems and was never supported.
ARC and AlphaBIOS are both history. They aren't available for new systems. SRM is now the preferred bootloader for Linux, and is available for most machines, old and new, except for a few systems that were designed for NT only.
Did you notice that Compaq freed up SRM? It used to require license fees but now it is freely downloadable on all hardware for which it is available.
Since the article had only a cursory reference to EV8, let me elaborate on this most significant product. It isn't very often that an idea comes that is so revolutionary that it causes a discontinuity in the year verses performance curve. First was the idea of RISC. Next came the idea of having a plurality of execution units and issuing more than one instruction per cycle. Then came the idea of executing instructions out-of-order. What will be the next major paradigm shift? The answer is Simultaneous Multithreading. And Alpha (EV8) is the chip that is spearheading this revolution. The problem of how to always keep the pipeline full has vexed architects for years. The solution presented by SMT is deceptively simple. When bubbles appear in the pipeline due to branch mispredicts, resource conflicts, etc, why not execute other threads? Most modern operating systems have multiple threads running simultaneously anyway. By adding only 5% additional SMT control circuit, EV8 performance will double. Contras this to the competitor's CMP approach (chip level multiprocessing) where doubling the chip area produces less than double the performance. Make no mistake, SMT is the next big thing. Expect other companies to follow suit. Even Intel expressed interest in embracing SMT in their future processors. Microprocessor Report Volume 13, Number 16, December 6 1999, page 10. I'm speaking only for myself.
Download Mazes and Puzzles from www.puz.com
No chance, sorry.
The Ruffian was orphaned by Deskstation. It doesn't support SRM, ARC or AlphaBIOS, but it's very own ARCSBIOS. Fortunately, MILO is available so you can run Linux.
But since there is no SRM (and never will be) there is no hope of running either Tru64 or OpenVMS. Your choices are NT, Linux, and possibly NetBSD (if somebody ever hacks it to load from MILO, which is possible but nobody's done the work).
But is it really that more expensive? I thought the only things that needed to be different for an Alpha system are the motherboard and processor?
Yes. But things like cache memory are expensive, you know (IIRC Athlons have only 512K L2 cache).
And it seems the new motherboards are using AMD's 750 Athlon chipset now. So shouldn't the mobos be cheap, like under $300? Is the processor very expensive?
Unfortnately the mobo is different than those used for Athlon, and hasn't achieved the same economies of scale.
Is it possible to get a 21264 system with SCSI for under $3000?
Don't know about SCSI, but you can find a fully configured UP1100-based system for well under $3000. (Do you really need SCSI? You could always add it on later...)
I bought one for home use 2 years ago.
It was more expensive than my 486 was 8 years ago, but still to this day, it is the best machine I own. The build quality is astounding, and it is a joy to program (I'm a mathematician, and 64 bit registers rock my world).
I believe that when I buy a 1G Athlon it won't be much better for me than the Alpha, and of course that's 2-3 years later!
I use Linux, the distribution is irrelevant as long as you get one that is well enough tested before they put it on the shelves.
The AlphaLinux RedHat mailing list have provided answers to every question I've ever asked about every issue, and they don't even ask which distribution I use...
FatPhil
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
I actually built a fully functioning Alpha system about 2-1/2 years ago for about $800. This machine was completely built using parts purchased from OnSale.com (now Egghead.com) and had a shopping list like what follows:
The individual prices may not be right, but I do remember the bottom line being about $800. My goal wasn't any major application, but to just have a "non-Wintel" machine at home. For that, it has worked wonderfully. Besides, it makes a cool conversation piece.
World Beach List, my latest project.
The Linux kernel has never been self-booting on Alpha.
The Linux kernel has been self-booting on the Alpha since just about day one. You can write a raw kernel image to a disk and boot it from the system firmware, just like you can on the i386 architecture. However, few people do, because this is very limiting (again, just like on the i386 architecture). You can only have one kernel image per disk partition, you have to pre-allocate raw disk space for it, and you cannot pass parameters.
(For those who are curious, look in $KERNEL_SOURCE/arch/alpha/boot/, especially main.c function start_kernel.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I ended up looking elsewhere...
My impression was Compaq was giving lip service to Linux support. Maybe that's not the case in the very few months since then. I'd like to know... I saw a freshmeat announcement of drivers for a Compaq HBA for fibre channel since then but after that point it was too late...
Yep, I have a 21164a 533. (164LX)
Absolutly one of the best machines I've ever had. I've had it for two years.. at the time I got it, the equivelant Intel costs twice as much.
With the advent of Gnome and good support from XFree, the alpha has been a very cool machine for me.
I'm planning on getting an XP1100 here in the next few months. (AGP baby! Uses the AMD Irongate chipset!)
Anyhow, I highly recommend one if you want to do 64 bit hacking NOW.
And anyone out there waiting for 64bit intel can thank the Alpha people for working out most of the 64 bit issues in the software they (might one day) use. Or you could get yourself an alpha.
Just stay away from nVidia. Their cards do NOT work on alpha systems.
Pan
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Actually, no. m68k was the first non-x86 processor to run Linux, but Alpha was the first to get integrated into the main kernel tree.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
I think I've already asked this on /. but here you go anyway :)
I've got a ruffian (samsung) motherboard with a 21164 on it, and was wondering if I can install Tru64 on it:
If I remember, digital unix could only boot on digital unix mobos, not on alphaPCs. Is that still the case?
Not that I dislike alphalinux or anything (still haven't updated from 2.0.38 yet, need to flash a milo 2.2.something), just wondering :)
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"Hasta la victoria siempre!" El Comandante
For a long time digital (and now compaq) have claimed that their optimizing compiler for the alpha was dramatically better than gcc. Does anyone know if this is still the case?
Slashdot ran an article linking to some benchmarks. According to the results, compaq's claim is correct, their compiler is much better than the gcc port.
garc
>My impression was Compaq was giving lip service to Linux support.
Well they are!
BSD is the real future....
http://www.testdrive.compaq.com/os/#bsd
If you are interested in Open Source, you'll want to try FreeBSD, an advanced Unix operating system based on code developed at the University of California at Berkley and made available as a Berkley Software Distribution. FreeBSD runs on many different platforms, and is powerful enough to drive some of the most popular sites on the Internet, like Yahoo! We have Test Drives of it running on AlphaServer
DS10-L's Look for Test Drives of other BSD variants in the future! Sign up for an account and take FreeBSD for a spin
The reality is the expected boost from NT isn't there for the Alpha. So *ANY* OS they can get running and supported, they will. If they can give away a box or 2 and have people write code for no money out of Compaq's pocket.....its a great deal for Compaq.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
I thought Linus just left his alpha in the box and only turned it on so he could say to DEC that he'd switched it on.
You've got the story right, but you've got your machines mixed up - either IBM or Motorola (I can't remember which) wanted him to port Linux to PPC, but once he had it working on the Alpha he got from Mad Dog, he left the PPC in the box. One day he turned it on just so that he could tell them he turned it on.
Linus has been an Alpha supporter for a long time.
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I've got an LX164 (600mhz EV56, 512MB of RAM, 8GB SCSI drive) and it's the sweetest machine I've ever had, and one of the fastest ones I've ever used (the only faster one was an Alpha I got the opportunity to play around with at Goddard Space Center, which was a dual 600mhz Alpha with 4GB of RAM :-)
:-)
I have to admit, I don't use it as my main machine, mostly because I use 3D Studio and Painter 6 often and don't have NT for Alpha. But it's the workhorse around here - it's our IP Masq box, Samba server, web server, FTP server, SMTP server, and POP/IMAP server, and it used to be the home for Smokedot until our DSL got cut off. When i do hook my 19" monitor up to it and use X, it is FAST. Blindingly fast. I didn't think it was humanly possible for X with Helix Gnome to go so fast, but it's much faster and more responsive than my roommate's Athlon 800 running either Win2k or Linux, and it just blows my P2 350 out of the water.
Conclusion? Any geek who runs Linux would be, IMHO, much happier with an Alpha than x86. I run RedHat, but I know Debian and SuSE both have Alpha distributions, as well as Free- and NetBSD. Every open source program I've tried on it has worked great - some of them give warnings on compile which seem to indicate that they're not 64-bit clean, but they work fine nonetheless. It's also got a ridiculous number of PCI/ISA slots and drive bays - 10 full-height drive bays, 4 ISA, and 6 PCI slots.
The only issue is games - I haven't seen a single commercial game which has a Linux/Alpha port, which kinda sucks. It would make a sick gaming platform, especially now that the SRM compatibility problems with nVidia cards have been fixed.
Not to mention the fact that any CPU with 4MB of L2 cache is good in my book
--
Hrm....guess I should get that Alzheimer's checkup.
I'm pretty sure it was Quake, and I know I was in DC, so it could have been late '96. FedUnix (now known as OpenSourceWorld if it's still around).
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
OLinux: The use Linux is more frequent in Alpha or PCs? How long do you use it in Alphas? Have any numbers?
Richard Payne: The Alpha was the first non-i386 processor to run Linux. It all started when Digital (now Compaq) gave Linus an Alpha machine several years ago. I don't have any numbers of Alpha with Linux vs. PCs with Linux. I'm not sure anybody has accurate numbers of that.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
I love the Alpha processor, but it needs a shrink in the worst imaginable way:
A 0.35um 600 MHz 21264 sucks back 47A @ 2.35V = 109 W! The things desolder themselves (apocryphal). In 0.18um, 600 MHz would only be ~16A @ 1.6V = 26W leaving plenty of room to go up to the coveted GHz (26A@1.6=43W).
Is Compaq trying to kill this processor by denying it a shrink? Sorry, the font on that URL was too small to read.
I saw this juicey bit over at the AlphaLinux Homepage.. The Linux kernel's assembly routines for Alpha have been updated, resulting in a large system performance boost on EV6 machines.
Submitting 64-bit bug-fixes to Linux kernel and applications, by the way, is an easy way to contribute back to the OS community. With the upcoming 64-bit Intel and AMD processors in the horizon, the more applications are made 64-bit clean and kernel bugs get fixed, the more advantage OS community will have over the closed operating systems.
You don't have to give up your current setup. Just buy some inexpensive left-over Alpha and try compiling software on it. If it doesn't compile, fix it and release the patch to community. In time this will benefit everybody.
All of this information is available in the Compaq Quickspecs. Here is the link to the MA8000 quickspecs for North America: http://www5.co mpa q.com/products/quickspecs/10545_na/10545_na.HTML
I don't know if this support was available back in april, it may not have been, or the sales rep may have been one of the Proliant old guard types.
I got a little hands on time with an RA8000 and Linux last week and it was very slick and easy to set up.
I browse with my threshold at 2 so I can't read my own comments :-)
For several of my (integer) applications, an alpha 21264 at 466 Mhz is literally twice as fast as a pentium III at 500 MHz speed. Something like 20% of this is in the compilers. For one application, the fact that the alpha is 64 bit is the killer point. For the other, I'm not sure what the issue is. The tests are on the smallest cache size 21264 currently shipping, which is 2M.
As for what is the best price/performance ratio, this is a tougher call. Remember that to most people one system twice as fast is worth lots more than 2 systems once as fast. And yes, especially in a beowulf.
One area where alpha _systems_ really clean up is in memory bandwith and (64bit) PCI bandwidth. For applications like cplant where the network (myrinet) is faster than a PC PCI bus, this is a killer factor.
You are completely off base. Compaq and Samsung have pumped over half a BILLION dollars into Alpha engineering. And Compaq has cinched deals with the the DOE and has made other huge deals in Europe. You are looking at it from a "PC" users perspective. Look at the *enterprise* and you'll see a much different picture. Nothing competes with Alpha in the high end, and that picture won't change. Alpha has had the engineering lead since 1993. Its a wonderful scalable and clean architecture.
For a long time digital (and now compaq) have claimed that their optimizing compiler for the alpha was dramatically better than gcc. Does anyone know if this is still the case?
I know of several large alpha cluster installations (including the cplant at sandia national labs with over 1300 alpha processors!--http://www.cs.sandia.gov/cplant/), but it's never been clear that alphas really hit the price/performance curve for *integer* performance. Outside of scientific computing, floating point performance just doesn't matter that much. What matters is integer throughput and my recollection is that when considering SpecINT/$, Intel and related boxes are just cheaper.
Finally, there's the issue of datedness and market timeliness. Alpha has been around for forever and has just not really taken off in any big way, as far as I can tell. With W2K and NT dropping alpha support and no intel-killing performance on the horizon (unless wildfire is everything they crack it up to be), it seems unlikely that it will storm the market. alpha is the past. transmeta is the future ( I *know* they're aimed at completely different markets and have different design goals, but buzz is buzz and there's only so much of it to go around for processors. i don't think alpha will get any more.
Unfortunately they charge $400 for the C++ compiler, and it does not seem to take the "-fast" switch, and the man pages are miswritten so that you cannot read the names of any switches. When I compiled our "real" application (about 100K lines of C++) the result was about equal in speed to the -O3 gcc version, which was a real disappointment. I don't know if the failure was due to the C++, the lack of the correct switch, or because my tiny test programs did not accurately simulate what we really did.
Still, $400 is not much. Anybody know if they have compiled the kernel with this?
I'm getting more and more interested in the idea of switching from x86 Linux to Alpha Linux in the home. It seems that from a software perspective, AlphaLinux is just as viable as x86-Linux. And Compaq/DEC actually supports Linux users unlike Apple. But I have a question for the AlphaLinux people here: how much does it cost to build/buy a "low-end" Alpha system? A lot of people seem to be arguing that Alpha's are just as cost effective as PC's. Is it true? I've looked around for system prices, and everything I've seen as been in order of $6,000 or $11,000 .
But is it really that more expensive? I thought the only things that needed to be different for an Alpha system are the motherboard and processor? And it seems the new motherboards are using AMD's 750 Athlon chipset now. So shouldn't the mobos be cheap, like under $300? Is the processor very expensive?
Is it possible to get a 21264 system with SCSI for under $3000?
Thanks in advance.