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."

Comments

Re:Shrink!

[mikefoley]

EV6 CPU's are at .35um
EV67 CPU's are at .25um
EV68 CPU's are at .18um

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.

Re:Alpha will be dead within three years

[greg]

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.

SMT: The next big thing

[puz]

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.

Compaq and Linux

[weave]

Earlier this year, with $250,000 to spend, I was looking at a nice StorageWorks SAN from Compaq. One of my conditions was that it would work with Linux, be it on Alpha or Intel. The sales rep initially took the attitude "why would you want to do that for?" and then pushed an Intel/NT solution. After insisting, they said they could let me in on a secret that Fibre Channel HBA support would be announced in April. Well that came and went, and nothing. Finally in summer they said "Yeah, we support Linux in the SAN, but only when in an arbitrated loop (which sucks since the entire SAN is like a hub not a switch).

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...

Shrink!

[redelm]

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.

What's going on with Linux and Alpha?

[Jeffrey Baker]

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.

Re:Truth

[Mark F. Komarinski]

Yea, I'm pretty sure that's true. I remember seeing back in ...1994 or 1995 an Alpha playing Linux Quake at 1024x768 full screen. The PC at the time was stuck at 320X200 for Quake IIRC.

The big push for getting Linux on the Alpha was MadDog (now at VA Linux) who was, at the time, in marketing for DEC. He spent much of his time going around and being a Linux prophet, getting companies and customers familiar with Linux. The end result being that DEC would sell more Alpha systems and make money.