Compaq Transfers Alpha to Intel

yaba was one of many who noted that Intel is apparently buying alpha from compaq. They also plan to move to their servers to Itanium. There will be at least one more generation of the Alpha chips, but you can imagine how much that'll matter. I still like alpha chips. Behold! Consolidation!Update: 06/25 02:19 PM by H :Check out my recent story about this as well.

Comments

Compaq, shame on you!

[emil]

I had hoped that Compaq would aggressively market Alpha with the DEC acquisition, and would offer us a choice in the IA32-IA64 migration.

I had hoped for fast and reasonably-priced Alpha systems. These never materialized. You never even gave the architecture a chance - the marketing was nonexistent.

I've had a reasonable level of respect for Compaq equipment, but now I hear that Compaq wants to reposition itself as a services company.

Shame on you, Compaq. You are the second largest computer company in the world, but it looks to the public that you are lackeys, easily threatened and controlled by Intel and Microsoft. You could have made the market a better place, but all that you've done is make everything worse.

I guess that it's all in Sun's hands now.

Interesting.

[jd]

The Alpha and the Intel designs were about the only two serious competitors out there, for the domestic market.

• The StrongARM has been very badly promoted, although it's a great design.
• The Transputer has never -seen- promotion, although it is probaby one of the most powerful, flexible processor architectures ever developed.
• The Sparc is dead, except for the European Space Agency's clone.
• The UltraSparc costs more than the European Space Agency is worth.
• Transmeta's Crusoe is nice, but without any non-Intel modules, it's essentially an Intel clone. Also, design problems are rumoured, and it's really only a chip for laptop/handheld systems.
• Motorola essentially quit making processors some time back.
• IIT made some great vector co-processors for the Intel, but seem to have gone extinct. And even if they hadn't, only Fractint ever made use of the extra instructions.

Result: Intel can now make ever-more pathetic CPUs on the grounds that there is NOBODY to compete with it. It has a de-facto monopoly. Everyone else is specialized into tiny niches, dead in the water, or just dead.

Basically this means keep clear of Compaq...

[Colin Smith]

Until they've finished pissing about with their high end products.

When you're buying large servers you want a 5-10 year upgrade lifeline in front of you.

Good news for Sun, SGI, IBM, HP.

Missed some

["Zow"]

Some of these have also been noted by other respondants, but let me see if I can summarize:

• Motorola Power PC: With the next generation of faster G4 processors comming out and Apple's continuing commitment to the architecture, I wouldn't write this one off yet.
• IBM Power PC: I haven't exactly figured out what diferentiates IBM's and Motorola's PPC chips, but it seems like IBM's are targeted more towards embeded applications where they'll probably remain a big player for some time.
• IBM Power: It seems with the IBM - Motorola split on the PPC, IBM returned to the power architecture for their big boxes. The latest offering is the Power III, which gives the Alpha and Itanium a serious run for their money. Keep in mind that this processor is at the heart of the world's fastest computer, so I think it's providing some stiff compition for Intel. (Disclaimer: I may have some bias given that ASCI White is just a few blocks away from me right now.)
• MIPS: I think I heard that SGI is migrating all their MIPS machines to Itanium, so this one's probably dead.
• PA-RISC - HP worked jointly with Intel on Itanium with the intention of it replacing PA-RISC, so I think it safe to declare this one out of the running.
• AMD's x86-64 architecture - I honestly don't know much about this architecture, but from my understanding it's a derivitive of the Intel x86 architecture with extentions for 64 bit memory addressing. Whether or not you want to consider it an Intel design is up to you, but Intel certainly isn't going to endorse them and I think they'll provide some stiff competition for Itanium (particularly if they run existing x86-32 code flawlessly).

As for some of your other comments:

• With the new higher speed UltraSparc III processors that Sun is putting in their new Blade machines, Sun has once again reached a reasonable price/performance point, so I wouldn't discount them too much yet. I completely don't understand your comment about the ESA not being able to afford it. Furthermore, Sun is very anti-Intel: I've heard the only place in Sun that they're allowed to have Intel boxes is is the Solaris x86 development group, so Sun will likely be the last major workstation/server vendor to make the switch to hop on the Intel bandwagon.
• Motorola most certainly still makes processors. Besides the afore mentioned PPC, the 68k architecture is still around since it's great for embedded applications and handheld computers, such as the Palm (which last I heard used the Dragonball processor - a variation of the 68040, I think).

In summary, I think your conclusion that the Intel based design is the only serious contender out there is a bit overstated.

-"Zow"

Re:Before making comparisons to the Borg and M$

[nels_tomlinson]

I love how when a big company like Intel/Microsoft/Sun/ make a move to potentially give themselves a better product or enhance an existing product, it's a violation of anti-trust or they're going to blow up the world! We hackers/programmers/lovers of free speech need to unite and destroy! Yet when an underdog/open source/free software company pulls something like this it's viewed as a triumph for the community and we all should rejoice!

There is a reason for the double standard: AMD really _is_ different than Intel. It isn't because they're nice guys, it's because they are the underdog. Their continued success, and their very existence, is in doubt from year to year. If AMD were to buy the Alpha, that would give them some additional technology resources and another product line which is solidly positioned at the high end of the pc market where they are weakest. AMD+Alpha would be a better competitor to Intel, and we would all benefit as Intel scrambled to raise quality and production and lower costs.

Intel is already stiff, possibly insurmountable, competition to AMD. Intel+Alpha lets Intel assimilate any valuable elements of the Alpha which can overcome the NIH syndrome, and strengthens their lead in the high end, high margin pc market where AMD really needs to catch up.

Intel+Alpha = less competition in the future, AMD+Alpha = more competition in the future. This isn't because of any moral superiority of AMD, but because AMD isn't yet big enough to screw us as effectively as Intel. If AMD "wins the war" and displaces Intel, they will of course try to do the same sort of damage that Microsoft did when they "won the war" against IBM. But remember, if you're old enough, that IBM was an evil empire too, before MS cut them down to size.

Worrying about monopoly and the evils thereof isn't a once-and-for-all sort of thing, and we can't divide the world into the evil and the good. Intel and MS are antitrust threats because they are NOT the underdogs, and thus can smother competition with FUD and dollars. AMD and Sun can't, yet, so we don't worry about them. Yet.

A desperate attempt?

[FortKnox]

Is this a desperate attempt to stay in competition with AMD? To speak bluntly, Intel hasn't released a stable chip since the P3. They keep releasing really fast chips just to keep the pace with AMD. But with the recalls of the P4, I think the chip buying community is ready to put their faith in AMD.

I think the brightest move for Intel would be to dump the P4, and just update the technologies on the alpha... The alpha isn't anywhere near the end of its cycle...

--
"That's one small step for man..."

Hmmm...

[Fat Rat Bastard]

From what the CNet article said it looks like Chipzilla is interested more in the Alpha engineering department than they are the actual Alpha technology. Rumor is, in the Inquirer story, that a lot of the Alpha folks really don't want to work for Intel (with AMD being the benifactor of a lot of ex Alpha engineers). Unless there's something going on that I'm too dumb to see this simply looks like Intel buying IA-64 market share from Compaq.

If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.

Today, the music dies. So long Alpha...

[fooguy]

The problem with rage is that it makes it hard to focus and say what you're really feeling.

Intel has made a fortune selling garbage. The x86 architecture is just that - garbage. CISC is dead, and has been for a long time. They couldn't make a decent SMP setup until they stole technology from a International Meta Systems (P6). The flaw in CISC is the inclusion of superinstructions - why add hardware to perform a partial arctangent when memory is cheap? Wait! I have an idea...let's add 57 new ones and call them MMX. Wait! How about 72 news ones called KNI/Streaming SIMD.

Could I do it better? No. But Alpha was truely, without a question in my mind, the finestest CPU ever engineered. It's a pleasure to work on, it's fast, it scales well, and it does out of order execution, which gives it a leg up on the Ultra Sparc.

This has caused a pretty big uproar on comp.os.vms as well. As you may or may not know, OpenVMS, which at one time was THE operating system to run (if you weren't blue) only runs on the VAX and Alpha. Well, Compaq quit making the VAX in September 2000, so this is it. While Compaq claims OpenVMS will be ported to IA-64, it's hardly comparable. There are VAXen in production that haven't been rebooted in a decade. Software in place that hasn't changed in years...and this is how it's going to end? Compaq gives away Alpha technology so they can focus on the iPaq?

These are the issues raised in comp.os.vms:

Will *every* Compaq product which is sold for Alpha VMS today ( or last week ) be ported to IA64? Will they all be available by January 2004? Do they have commitments from Oracle to meet that schedule ( Oracle appear to be "excited" about Tru64 on IA64 but didn't mention if they cared VMS would be available there )? Will all existing LP licenses be transferrable to IA64 at no cost ( to systems of comparable size)? [anyone who went through a VAX to Alpha transition will understand this question]

Will Compaq provide assistance to 3rd party vendors to move their products to IA64? Will IA64 ports be a straight "recompile and link" or will some programs require substantial changes ( eg device drivers and privileged code )?

My point was that it seems to get limited respect within Compaq. I've been told ( sorry I can't remember the source ) that it was a last minute decision to port it to Alpha and that it wasn't in the original game plan. My concern is the same thing could happen in the Alpha-IA64 transition.

FMS is another product I worry about. I understand it also wasn't going to be ported, until they realized that All-in-1 needed it. FMS was not recoded for Alpha it was just VESTed. Will it be possible to re-VEST it to run on IA64? Will it be done?

And the quote that sums the whole thing up, from Bill Gunshannon:

Of course, this means congratulations are in order for it's grandfather. The PDP-11 architecture has now not only outlasted the VAX, but also the Alpha.

foo?

Not transferring all of Alpha

[GreyPoopon]

Actually, this sounds more like the beginning of the end for Alpha. Compaq isn't really transferring Alpha to Intel:

Under the multi-year technology agreement, Compaq is transferring significant Alpha tools and engineering resources to Intel, as well as granting licenses to Compaq's Alpha microprocessor technology and compilers.

Based on the above, it looks like they are providing some resources and tools, and licensing the current technology. What this means (IMHO) is that they are partnering with Intel to work towards next-generation processors (Itanium and beyond), and are helping provide Intel with additional resources to improve their 64-bit line. Compaq is, according to the article, also commiting to the release of one more generation of Alpha processors. But, I think you can assume that will be the last. They will be porting their OS technology to Itanium. The plus side to this is that you may see some of the more interesting bits of Alpha technology show up down the line in some of the Intel processors.

I wonder how all of this will impact AMD....

GreyPoopon
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