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Alpha Lives! But Who Will Market It?
chriton writes "The Inquirer is running articles about HP's and new "Marvel" server which will arrive Tuesday, Jan 14th and the expectation that HP will try to keep it's performance quiet. Not because it's bad like Itanic I, but because it's too good! It's built on Alpha EV78 processors connected by a switched fabric and promises blazing performance. "Marvel has, apparently some rollickingly good benchmarks that HP wants to underplay, just in case people start comparing the performance of the Alpha Marvel architecture with the Itanium 2 it also sells, and perhaps more importantly, the SuperDome machines." Alpha offers the kind of choice and competition the processor market will sorely miss when it goes. The FTC was sleeping when they allowed HP to acquire it."
Have Spider-Man, Hulk, Wolverine, and all the other X-Men, using Alphas in the comic books. An endorsement from Professor X might be enough to get me to buy one. "Look! Cerebro is now 100 times more powerful thanks to this Alpha!"
Spoken like a true guy who doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.
Companies are buying servers from Sun, IBM (their non-Intel ones), SGI, even Apple in about the same numbers that they ever were, adjusted for the total market decline. (In other words, if 1 out of 10 servers sold in 1997 was Sun, then about 1 out of 10 sold today would still be a Sun.)
There's plenty of market out there for non-Dell, non-Intel, non-Microsoft servers.
I write in my journal
no, compaq sold alpha technology to intel, but they still had it for themselves and were still selling alphas. When HP bought compaq, they inherited the alpha line.
and while they're great machines that perform well, they're very limited. It's difficult for us to get many of the applications that we use for the Alpha, and if the app is available, the vendor usually provides poor support for it. Sure you can compile OS software on the alpha, but the commercial world overwhelmingly uses traditional closed software. HP decided to stop production of the Alpha because they had a competing product (pa/risc) that was in higher demand. They even plan to eventually lose PA/RISC in favor of itanium, as the article mentions. As far as price goes, one of our clients purchased a wildfire gs320 because of the low price. They found that while it offers acceptable performance, it's very difficult and expensive to find the expertise needed to properly maintain this equipment. We run a primarily Sun shop not because it's necessarily the best, but because it's what everyone else runs, and thus easier to maintain and cheaper in the long run.
Go away, or I will replace you with a very small shell script.
Compaq sold it to intel before the merger.
marvel was already in the works before the HpaQ merger, and it would really make little sense to take a chip all the way to fab w/o at least running SOME of them to try and recoup some cost.
Plus it will probably give Intel a good idea of which components of Marvel to rape for the next gen of the (t)Itanic.
I was a very short-lived DecpaQ Tru64 admin, but have to admit I fell in lust for the OS and architechure. Our alphas ran superb for their age and the obscene obese demands our Oracle DBA inflicted upon them. Nary a whimper. I still think it's mildly criminal Compaq threw away the horsepower farm simply because they were too stupid to market the things properly.
-'fester
IIRC, some of the associated technologies like the switching architecture and some of the NUMA features were not licensed but held by Compaq for their Itanium servers (to give them an edge).
It's built on Alpha EV78 processors connected by a switched fabric and promises blazing performance.
...[Marvel] So good, in fact, that our friend Jenny tells us the following: "If HP still believed the Alpha chip was worth the candle, rather than being cosy with its friends at the Intel Corporation, and marketed it properly, it might render all other server platforms into carbonised bread, otherwise known as toast".
But that will never happen. My sources claim that HP realises the EV7 is a fantastic chip and wants to stop potential buyers of the HP Itanium servers from buying EV7 instead.
And, we understand, the HP suits have now laid down a diktat saying that not one Alpha benchmark will be released until the Itanium platform(s) is/are faster.
Jenny told us that her friends at HP who understand such things, think this could be a very long time coming.
And she also said that quite a lot of people inside the corporation wondered why the senior execs wanted to "shoot itself in the foot" by driving potential Alpha customers to the competition.
Nice analogy! Once a businessperson gets a clue about Linux (it's known to have happened), it may well open the floodgates.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
The only significant computer purchases made these days by businesses and consumers alike contain the words "Dell", "Intel", and "Microsoft".
Somebody better tell that to IBM--fast.
Indeed, now let me see. I could buy a PA-Risc... (Not!), or an IBM/Motorola Chipped thingie (Small market, bounded technology), or a Sparc box - small market bounded technology, arrogant supplier, single source.
Or I could buy an Alpha. A commitment of at least a Decade of support (What was I using 10 years ago, and what land fill is it in now..) A proven track record of meeting or beating the promises on performance.
Oh no, wait. I'll get an itanic. What you mean they are only available in limited quantities, and at vastly inflated prices. Oh, and the ones that everyone is raving about aren't going to me around for another 2-3 years. Hey, it takes that long to get orders through purchasing, who is worried...
And what's that. Adaptive partitioning within the box, (dynamically changable SMP and Clustering). Clustering that is more than Me and a standby mini-me. Couldn't be? When dod they get that working...
Note that the new Alpha moves the ES40/ES45 range out to GS (Big MF) nomenclature...
The one saving grace, is that scuttlebutt says that based on the intel thef acquisition of Alpha, that post-Madison Itanics will actually look more like an Alpha than a traditional Intel.
More things to file in my "I told you so" list, for later...
Yey, 500th post, on a subject I like :)
I remember when Compaq bought the Alpha technology. I was invited to a demo for their new workstation machine, that was back in the late 90s, I remember the workstation they were demoing in front of everyone, nice audience, people that worked on the movie Titanic were there to explain how they used the alpha technology to render those huge datasets, manipulate large 3d models, etc etc...
They were so EVASIVE when people would specifically ask them to compare the Alpha Workstation to intel workstation. I mean everything looked professionnal up to that precise moment. Why on earth are you getting yourself in so much trouble to advertise your alpha workstation, invite people to costly hotel floor, serve them good food, etc, if you don't want to address the PRIMARY concern of your target audience? What "non-alpha" people (new customers) want to know is why would they go alpha if it's not for the proprietary software?
(In this case, Lightwave was one of the tools and it was cross-platform, every Lightwave users KNEW that the alpha crushed the PC in rendering, so hiding this fact looked very suspicious for this small portion of the people that were there. Then you add the fact they they didn't want to give any comparing numbers, being evasive and all. The only positive thing they mentionned is the FX32 emulator and the fact that they could run non-native software like photoshop in their alpha workstation. Now who the hell would buy a workstation like this if it doesn't show any appeal outside from the people that already know about it? If you say "3x faster rendering, only 1.5x the price" now there's an apeal! They didn't! How on earth are they going to gain sufficient marketshare with mouth-to-ear strategy, where amiga, for example, failed. With a CPU R&D buisness, you need a LOT of sales to cover you expenses, they had a bomb on their hands, and while I understand that they had to play nice with Intel, they could have thrown the bomb at intel instead of blowing up with it.
This is another situation where Money and Monopoly is bad for evolutions and revolutions, try to find ONE SINGLE alpha user that bitched about the architecture (before it got left out dying, obviously), make a percentage (you'll probably get something close to 0%), then compare that percentage with Intel users. Not that Intel technology is bad, but it sure isn't revolutionnary, heck I'm still waiting to get that 7505 chipset board with 2 2.8Ghz Xeon on it, everything is back order or N/A yet. If compaq would have had a clue, I'd have a box probably 4x more powerful today with win2k support and good driver support for about the same price... shame.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
I bet Alpha still has a larger software base than Itanium.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
As an engineer that worked on EV7 it is sad to see such a wonderful machine fall by the way-side. When the SPEC numbers do come out not only will all the world will see that Alpha is again the world's fastest processor, but that Marvel systems scale linearly. We'll all eventually go over to Intel, which a lot of us aren't looking forward to, and hope not to get laid off
Alpha never seems to "make it" after all these 11 years, and still it seems doomed.....and two of the three operating systems introduced with it are NOT the choice of the data center, and the third dropped Alpha support! Maybe we should start a folk legend about "The Curse of the Alpha!"
Anyway, a cool kick-butt chip, it was....and if we ever see the benchmarks on this latest generation, I'll bet it still is. Too bad on this planet technical excellence and superiority of function and performance don't determine success in the marketplace.
Alpha's have always had awesome specs, hell I think slashdot started on a UDB (early alpha unit, small compact case, built in sound). The alpha processor has long been one of the best performing and worst marketed main processors in the history of computers.
The fact is that DEC wasn't in a posistion to market it, and when they COULD have sold the chip to use in apples (instead of PPC) they declined (morons). Compaq bought DEC and had NO clue what the hell to do. It took them almost 2 years to wrap their head around the fact that the alpha servers where the only profitable product they had. (See service support contracts and high margins for the high end alphas). By then it was too late, they were working on the merger with HP.
No HP's here, and doesn't want to compete with it's own inferior equipment. Lines are being drawn and you can bet that the superiour technology of the alpha will again suffer. Remember that the EV78 is an OLD alpha design and it still kicks ass. Compaq basically stopped developing the alpha series AGES ago. (the EV8 was supposed to be out early last year according to one of the early compaq alpha ropadmaps)
Too bad the alpha is dead. It is taking years for intel and IBM to come up with a chip that comes close to alpha performance. Good thing that they are competing against old alpha designs and the EV8 has been killed. Otherwise those darn pesky spec numbers would have been embarassing.
cluge
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
The only significant computer purchases made these days by businesses and consumers alike contain the words "Dell", "Intel", and "Microsoft".
Yeah, those 12 brand-new IBM P-series 630 servers we have sitting in our server room waiting to be installed must be an illusion.
You don't actually work in the tech industry, do you?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
NetBSD 1.5.2 (XJ6) #2: Tue Oct 29 21:04:19 EST 2002
D igital AlphaPC 164 400 MHz
xxxxx@alpha:/usr/src/sys/arch/alpha/compile/XJ6
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I dunno, I'd imagine that Linux would equal $$$ to a business man.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The only significant computer purchases made these days by businesses and consumers alike contain the words "Dell", "Intel", and "Microsoft".
Othwise known as DIM
for a dollar. You pay shipping and handeling charges of course.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I'm completely O-fucking-T here, but look at what Slashdot moderation comes down to. This person expresses their one-line, unsubstantiated opinion (never claiming to be doing anything more--no offense to you, TeknoHog), and because he appears to be on the side of the angels, BOOM, +4 Insightful. This is stupid; what good does viewing at +3 or higher do with ridiculous moderation like this? (Well, it will save you seeing this post, I guess ;)
Yeah, people have been saying that same thing since, what, the late 1970's? I'm sure it's going to happen, like, any minute now.
I write in my journal
And Itanium has much greater vendor support. Not saying much, since Alpha has only slightly more vendor support than OS/2.
What if some company, for example Red Hat bought the Alpha technology. Just think how a premier hardware architecture could be marketed along with Linux, which has huge growth potential.
If Linux is to totally dominate, Linux vendors need to come up with some better hardware.
What nightmare? They went to work for AMD, and are helping to put out Sledgehammer(?).
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
--was just reading an article on this very subject.
A big investment bank sorta disagrees, at least on the linux aspect addressed here.
Q3 2002 results are in: "IBM was the star of the quarter" quoted here
The computerworld article goes on to say of total server market for Q3
IBM 32%
HP 24.5%
Dell 7.7%
Sun 12.6%
Read the article for Intel-based server breakdown, and Unix server breakdown
I'll second that; I have to wonder how many Alphas Cray actually bought, because last I heard they use LOTS of them... Let's not forget that stuff like that is favorite equipment at some large government labs and agencies, mainly for engineering and visualization work.
C|N>K
On the other hand, I think HP was incredibly stupid to buy Compaq. What a brilliant plan: "There's no money to be made on commodity PCs, so we'll buy another PC vendor that's in a world of hurt. We'll still lose money on each one, but we'll make it up on volume." I'm pretty sure it's dragging them down, but they can play all sorts of accounting tricks to make it look OK on the books.
..the Alpha CPU, but I'm sure many are attached to Linux. As a small aside, know that RedHat Linux Advanced Server will have an important role in the undoing of the Alpha vs. Itanium II.
You might be surprised now, but in a couple of months you'll know why I said this.
Sigged!
Hmm, what's wrong with it? Why won't it run OpenVMS, Tru64, or NetBSD?
You're utterly misinformed on all counts. The best (1ghz, 3MB cache) Itanium2 lists for under $8,000 (see http://www.shopblt.com/cgi-bin/shop/shop.cgi?actio n=Enter&thispage=011003002001_B567007P.shtml&order _id=!ORDERID!) for a quote, or just search for itanium2 pricing). The best current Alpha (1.25 ghz ev68 for the ES45) will cost you $17,000, plus the huge premium that you pay on the server itself. For pricing details, you have to download compaq's crappy alpha configuration utility (http://h18003.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/acu/index.h tml) for Windows.
Meanwhile, you can check out the SpecFP base of 1019 for the Alpha and 1427 for the Itanium and figure out the price/performance for yourself. If you're more of an integer performance kind of guy, go to SPEC's web page and note that the standard 3.0 ghz Pentium IV (at, what, $750 on a bad day?) beats up the Alpha on integer performance.
As for partitioning, HP-UX on PA-RISC and AIX on POWER4 both offer far superior (and more mature) dynamic partitioning capabilities and workload management.
It is also ridiculous to say that POWER processors are a niche market. AIX on POWER has 30% of the unix market while Tru64 on Alpha has a mere 10%, by revenue. The exact same POWER chips are also used in IBM's iSeries (aka AS/400) line, further increasing their penetration.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the EV7 will be a bad processor, but I can't stand it when people malign perfectly fantastic chips (POWER and Itanium) with no information to back up those claims.
Samsung has full right to manufacture & develop Alphas, no matter what Intel or HP do.
Then DEC kind of died. They didn't seem to market. The tech was good, but no marketing, and some issues. Before the compaq merger, DEC sold StrongARM, and all it's fabs (aging) to intel, in return Intel was supposed to fab the next generation alpha chips, and was prevented by the FCC/court (or a combination) from aquiring alphas (due to anti-trust, not that that mattered to the DOJ when they did...) Intel did not fab the next generation (21164@smaller process and 21264s) of alphas. They claimed that they couldn't because the chip was too complex. (There is no evidence that they ever did, and this was just before the compaq merger)
Compaq acquires DEC. It takes it's time, but releases 21264s (fabed mostly by Samsung, and some supposedly by IBM), They branch off the alpha tech to API (Alpha Processor Incorperated) which sets the EV7 (21364 = (21264 core w/improvements + RAMBUS controller) development back. (additionally, MANY alpha engineers were hired by AMD when DEC was merging, and the EV6 bus (and many other tech goodies) were licenced to AMD (Slot A was originally an Alpha slot) for inclusion in Athlons (who still run on an Alpha bus)
Compaq decides to inhouse the developers again and sets EV7 back more. (EV8 is reportedly mostly on schedule) Then Compaq decides to sell the alpha tech (or much of it) to Intel (DOJ apparently doesn't care about anti-trust at this point) and cancels EV8 (which was reported to include Hyper-threading, multiple cores on a die, Onboard Memory controller (like the ev7) (pretty much every "cool" thing Power4, Intel, and AMD were planning on having.)...and was due out this year) EV7 is phenominally behind schedule. Finally EV7 makes an appearance, or will (asuming the article is accurate) as basically an EV6 core with tweaks and a RAMBUS memory controller onboard the chip (256-bit dual channel, so it actually isn't a POS like many RAMBUS inmplentations. (for comparison some RDRAM implementations have been 16-bit, many currently are still that or 32-bit)
Now, Alpha is slowly slipping, but currently (aside from Power4) the only chip holding it's own against Intel/AMD. (based on a several year old core at that) The EV7 will be the last generation of alphas, without all of the features the EV8 would have had (and probably the performance crown for a LONG time)
(compiled from memory, it is 1:30, and post errors/debates as responses)
Someday there will be a grand museum of clealy superior technology that failed in the market anyhow (CSTTFMA).
:-)
In it you will see the Amiga, OS/2, and the Alpha.
Hopefully we *won't* also see Linux there
Table-ized A.I.
At least while the "give away the printer, sell the ink" scam holds.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
And when Intel bought StrongARM, the architects left to found a startup called Alchemy, and created a great little MIPS-based processor core. Since then AMD bought Alchemy, so it must be like old home week at AMD. :-)
(in about 2-3 years I believe).
So what does this news mean ? Just trying to sell
some more alphas ? How long will they support this system ?
Learn about pinball machines on www.flippers.be
If I were to believe that everything was as simple as you make it, my conclusion would be that I need an Itanium 2 + Pentium IV + PA-RISC or POWER4 to have an overall better machine than an Alpha Server. Is that what you meant? Incidently, the reason the Alpha 21264 has 3 integer units (providing integer scores that dominate Itanic integer scores) is to keep the 2 fp units fed. I'm not an expert on the Itanic architecture, but I'm led to wonder if the Itanic integer units are capable of providing all of the array indexing and loop-counting chores needed for many floating-point numerical anaylysis algorithms. I'd really like to know an answer to this, since the Itanic appears so unbalanced when looking at SPEC scores alone.
Furthermore, you're comparing prices on processor cards for different systems using full retail price. Have you ever bought this kind of equipment? I know I've never paid full retail price when I have. And you don't need to use Compaq's pricing utility -- just get the model number and search with google like you probably did for th Itanic board. Unfortunately, for the cpu board (KN610-EB) you're describing, there aren't many links. Another problem is that the price you quote for the Alpha board includes additional cpu licenses for Tru64 (for the KN610-EB) or VMS (not sure -- KN610-EC?). I don't see anything at the link you provide which states that the price includes a Windows or HP-UX license (and don't kid yourself, you'll need a license).
It's not clear why you mention the 3MB cache on the Itanium. The EV67 boards (KN610-BA, for instance) for the ES40 Model II (which is old) have 8MB cache, and the EV68 board (KN610-EB, for instance) have 16MB of cache (note that these are the big L3 caches for Alphas, not on-chip like I think the Itanium is). Also, it's not clear to me that the processor boards include the same functional components -- do you know that they do (you already seem to have missed the OS license issue)?
You haven't provided the price for the systems, nor stated their default configurations. This is certainly important when making a comparison. You'll also want to compare memory prices, since ram for these servers sometimes has a special form factor and costs a bundle. Again, never use list prices for any of this stuff, as you can occasionally halve the price with a bit of negotiation. That goes for cars and good office chairs, too.
-Paul Komarek
Follow the link Dahan just gave you:a l-unix /
http://www.tru64unix.compaq.com/noncommerci
for the hobbyist Tru64 licenses.
But, who needs Tru64 when there is VMS? If you want to try out a public access VMS account on the Internet, check out the "Deathrow" cluster (yup, VMS had true clustering decades before Micrsoft claimed to be able to do it) at:
http://deathrow.vistech.net/
-Chris
CINT2000 and CFP2000 results from the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation website.
AlphaServer ES45
1250 MHz
SPECint2000 = 928
SPECint_base2000 = 845
SPECfp2000 = 1365
SPECfp_base2000 = 1019
CINT2000
CFP2000
HP server rx5670 (Itanium 2)
1000 MHz
SPECint2000 = N/A
SPECint_base2000 = 807
SPECfp2000 = 1431
SPECfp_base2000 = 1431
CINT2000
CFP2000
Dell Precision WorkStation 530 (Xeon)
2800 MHz
SPECint2000 = 957
SPECint_base2000 = 921
SPECfp2000 = 887
SPECfp_base2000 = 878
CINT2000
CFP2000
I think Red Hat is a couple of orders of magnitiude too small for that :)
There is a reason why there are only about half a dozen companies in the world that can afford to develop high end CPUs
Imagine how fast OS X would be if it were ported to Alpha! Apple could dump Motorola, annoy IBM and its installed base, and continue a tradition of adopting elegant hardware and staying with it until it marginalized itself in the marketplace!
;-)
Just in case anyone was unclear on the above...
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
EV78? Not likely. I seriously doubt that EV8 has even taped out yet. Marvel servers are powered by EV7 processors. EV78 will be a die-shrink version of the EV7 (don't recall the timeline for its appearance - probably about a year and a half).
*** Quantum Mechanics: The Dreams of Which Stuff is Made ***
I might have been convinced to support the merger if Carly Fiorina had publicly committed to producing EV8 because it was the right thing to do for DEC customers.
Because this was not done, HP proves that they have little to no interest in their customers in general, and the merger was undertaken to inflate Carly's bonus.
Then there are those who get moderated up by plagiarizing...
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
And how does someone who uses the word "BOOM" to make a point get modded up as "Insightful"?
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Actually, I was suggesting that you should look at your problem domain and realize that you can trash the alpha's price/performance and raw performance for either float-intensive or integer-intensive calculations.
Oops, mod that down, please, I hit submit by accident. I wanted to mention that the Itanium2 actually has 4 integer units, so it's not a simple FP/integer imbalance that leads to its disappointing integer performance. Rather, the IA-64 instruction set relies on the compiler to detect parallelism and present it explicitly to the processor (EPIC = explicitly parallel instruction computing). The scientific-type codes used in specFP are easier to analyze and parallelize than those in specINT. The compiler makes an incredible difference in IA-64, and as these mature, the architecture will dramatically improve its performance. Look at the jump from 1170 to 1430 in sepcFP when switching from HP's (fairly good) compiler to Intel's (very good) one.
We shouldn't imagine that IA-64 is just for float, however. If you look at real, commercial software benchmarks (like http://sap.com/benchmark), you can see that a 4-way Itanium 1 ghz handily beats a 4-way 1 ghz Alpha (no scores posted for newer Alphas) on the SAP benchmark, which is certainly not floating point code.
As for retail pricing, I agree that people don't pay full price. However, they're likely to get similar discounts from both intel/hp and alpha/hp, so this is irrelevant. Knock 30% of each price in your head if you want.
Still, my original point stands. If you have primarily integer/commercial code, IA-32 provides superior price performance over the Alpha. If you have primarily float/scientific code, IA-64 provides superior price/performance over the Alpha.
I guess that's why I responded. The Alpha primary market has been research, though Compaq tried to make noise about its server potential. As a researcher that does a lot of computation, I have no code that ignores half of my cpu. Thats why I like the Alpha, and why our lab group is stunned by the way a 667MHz Alpha performs as well as a P-IV at double or nearly triple the speed.
Big caches, big bandwidth, big memory (which is the real reason we're using them), and well-designed for numerical codes. I'm happy to defend the Alpha for the "corner" of the research market it does best -- numerical and statistical code. The only people I've met who argue performance/dollar for the Itanium got their Itanium for free.
-Paul Komarek
P.S. to meatplow: I too have a 500MHz AlphaPC 164, and it's running NetBSD 1.6... dunno why it didn't work for you, 'cuz it should...
I have read most of the the major threads on this article and they essentially revolve around the idea that Alpha cpu's are so damn fast and reliable and it is a shame that it will die. It is hard for me to sympathize when my 900 Mhz AMD machine can run everything I need (and a whole lot more). When my AMD machine's CPU is more powerful than any Mainframe sold in the 80's, I just can't get all that excited about a really well designed CPU that is dying. Sure some things need more horse power and if it is important, they can buy rediculously expensive hardware to give them the cycles but the day is nearing when cycles and hardware mean less and less and application compatibility, support, and price mean everything.
I miss the Karma Whores.
Interesting that both the 1GHz Itanium2 and the 1250 MHz Alpha are similar in speed to the 2800MHz Xeon (a bit slower integer, a good bit faster floating point), with less than half the clock rate.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Digital's relational database (RDB) was sold to oracle hence Oracle RDB
That's correct. But I was talking about Oracle server, NOT Rdb.
We used to run Rdb when it was a DEC product, but migrated to Oracle 7 Server when Oracle purchased Rdb as Oracle clearly wanted Rdb dead (their pricing showed that). However, Oracle Server still runs very nicely on Alpha/OpenVMS.
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender