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Alpha-Based Samsung Linux Goodness
Peter Dyck writes: "This summer Compaq divested itself of the Alpha technology. The Alpha tech was purchased by Intel who most likely will bury it after grafting its best aspects to their own 64 bit IA-64 system. However, the non-exclusive terms of the deal allowed Samsung
to continue producing and developing the best 64-bit processor architecture there is today. Now, as a happy owner of a four years old DEC AlphaPC164 I was delighted to see this announcement by Samsung Electronics. In short, the upcoming UP1500 motherboard will house a 64 bit 800+ MHz Alpha 21264B CPU, 4 GB DDR memory, 10/100 Mps LAN, USB and yes, it will run Linux."
Most extended instruction sets (MMX,SSE,3dNow,Veocity) that work on large chunks of floating point data at a time are not designed for accuracy - they are designed for speed. In an environment where precision is required only IEEE floating point is of vale - the extended instructions are great for Quake, Photoshop and benchmarks, but hopefully nobody is using them for real work.
You assertion that X86 processors are 'brilliant engineering' is a but odd - X86 processors have a lot of cruft around to deal with old 8-Bit,16-Bit (Real and Protected) and 32-Bit modes. The Alpha and other chips that have been introduced in the last few years don't have all that garbage lying around and can concentrate on doing things correctly - where X86 designeres spend a lot of time making the things backwards compatible. Instead of being a 'Porche' as you described it - they end up being a VW Bug with a turbine engine graftwed on the hood - it works but it sure is ugly.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Almost all modern apps require hacks like MMX and 3DNow? (Realize that while you're using either of those, you can't use the floating point pipeline because it uses some of the same paths as the SIMD engine. Also note that it costs cycles to switch back and forth and if you're not doing LOTS of matrix math, you're not going to use them- you're going to use hand tuned floating point/integer code.) How many really, really use them? Not a lot of them, in reality.
x86 has hacks to get SIMD instructions, limited register spaces, weaker floating point, etc. AltiVec is a more rational scheme and PPC CPUs have much more useful register sets and rational instruction sets, and it's floating point is nearly twice as fast.
Hacks do not a "Porche" make. To use your analogy completely, the x86 is a Mustang GT to the PPC's Porche. Both will get you there. Both go fast- but one is higher performance and handles better.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
An older board - the UP2000 - is a dual processor SDRAM (not DDR) based Alpha motherboard, which has 6 PCI slots, two of which are 64-bit.
This new board has DDR ram, but only 32-bit PCI, and then only three slots. While nice and all - DDR is good, and of course it's for the Alpha 21264B, not 21264A - this does seem a bit of a step backwards in the IO stakes. Especially when it's noted that the UP2000 has onboard Ultra-2 SCSI as well.
Perhaps this board was originally targetted at the 'lower-end' workstation segment? Does anyone know if a more server-oriented 21264B board is on the way? It seems sadly unlikely given the current circumstances.
If one wants to have 64-bit multiprocessing on a budget, what are the current alternatives?
I believe the comparison you are talking about is here: www.compaq.com/hpc/ref/ref_alpha_ia64.pdf
Better get it quick before it mysterisouly disappears like all other pro-Alpha/anti-IA64 material...
Bill