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Alpha Can Live Without Microsoft
Joe Vigneau writes "The Boston Globe has an article that says the Alpha, even now that Microsoft will no longer support it, won't dissappear off the face of the earth. Here's one quote: 'The market has basically been pretty clear that the market for us is the Linux space,' Borkowski said."
There are some sites that advertise resonable prices. Check out www.dcginc.com for some Alpha-based systems. Most are under the $3000 range and there is a decent one at the $2000 mark. I don't think that these prices are terribly unreasonable. -Rg
Don't pet the burning dog
Alpha can operate big-endian or little-endian. Linux, NT, Tru64 and OpenVMS all run in little-endian mode though. NT never supported big-endian processors. The Alpha/Linux port could have been big-endian I suppose, but it would have broken compatibility with Tru64 Unix (OSF/1, as it was called then, was very helpful back in the early porting stages of Alpha/Linux). I don't see any real advantages to either. Very successful computer architectures have been built either way.
It's not a joke if you're landlocked on NT by software issues and need Alpha performance.
So you're basically saying you have limited or no experience with NT Alpha. But you know that "it's a joke" somehow, eh?
Oh well.
Don't blame Compaq for making a smart (but belated) business decision. NT on Alpha wasn't selling well (some estimates place it as low as a mere 5% of Alpha sales). Compaq was spending millions of dollars a year in development of Alpha NT. If the 100 people who were let go were each making only $75,000 a year, plus benefits, then Compaq will probably save close to 10 million dollars a year on this alone. Compaq was also spending millions of dollars a year in advertising Alpha NT. They obviously spent much more on advertising for Alpha NT than they did for Linux Alpha, OpenVMS and Tru64 put together (based on what I've seen for page count, placement and number of publications), and got far less return. Even if they retarget some of those advertising dollars to other Alpha OSes, they should see a significantly better return on those advertising dollars.
ITYM a 533MHz 21164... if you can get a 21264 of *any* speed for $1500, please tell us where. :-)
This person is almost certainly referring to a 21164 (if not something older), not a modern 21264. The 21164 is not nearly as fast as the 21264.
Just wanted to quickly follow up on price/avail. on Alpha based Linux systems. Go now, ye curious seekers of tru 64 bit penguins, to The Linux Store and see that you too can put your hands on a 533 Mhz Alpha for under $1600 U.S. That's a complete, Linux Pre-installed, with SoundBlaster AWE64, etc, system. I have nothing against Intel, but I won't give up my alphas... YMMV, Rob
Compaq is the one responsible for maintaining the Alpha port of NT. Compaq shut down the porting group at DECwest in Bellevue, WA (in fact, they're having a special job fair for them today.) MS doesn't really care, they don't need the Alpha port. As far as 32/64 bit, my understanding is there will be no further 32 bit versions of Alpha NT, and there will be no 64 bit version (although Alphas are being used to develop NT 64.)
You can get an older 21064-275 motherboard at www.computersurplusoutlet.com for $150. Unfortunately, it's the NT-only version of the board, so you have to spend about that much again to reflash it to accept NetBSD or Linux. It sucks, but if you know someone with the SRM (and I wish *I* did), it can supposedly be upgraded.
In the DEC catalog it appears they sold this same motherboard in two flavors, one capable of running NT for $1000 and one capable of running Digital Unix for $5000. Is it true that the only difference is in the flash??
Why are you asking trivia questions?
We are discussing real iron here.
- Debian also has a distro for the Alpha. I just installed it on an old AS 250 at work. The main problem with the thing was getting X running. Even now its not great. The graphics hw in the things use a proprietary DEC standard called TGA, and the XFree86 server for it is not really optimized. I'm lucky it exists at all. - The most commonly available and cheapest ($0=n$50) used Alpha on the market is the Multia. Some folks have concluded that even free, the Multia has a poor cost/benefit ratio, it being kind of weird and all. YMMV, but beware if you're not prepared to invest lots of time and a little cash.
Blame MS for shooting themselves in the foot. No more NT/Alpha means no more "Scalablity Days" and no more even pretending they can compete in the midrange until they get a working Merced OS out.
Of course, Microsoft self-destruction should be popular around here.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Yes, it says that with enough coercion, all the free open source 32 bit software can be ported to a 64 bit Alpha platform. Unfortunately there is a lot of badly written 32 bit code that is quite a challange to port.
Of course, if you're going to run nice hardware like an Alpha, you're better off with NetBSD, and not an x86 operating system that's been patched.
If by "most NT users" you mean workstation users, you're right. However, the big sell for a chip like Alpha is on the server side, and there are/were plenty of Alpha NT server apps. Such as MS Back Office, which probably accounts for 50%+ of NT server installations.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
They were using MIPS when they got acquired....
How do you measure that Alpha NT "wasn't selling well" when every NT CDROM that I have ever seen included the binaries for i386 and Alpha. I suppose the shipped-with-OS count does matter, but once a retail boxed NT is sold, what hardware it gets installed on is up to the purchaser.
Granted, probably very few copies of Windows NT sold at BestBuy end up on Alpha systems.
You forgot OpenVMS, also. VMS still runs a lot of pretty important things - most of the US electric power generation and transmission networks run on OpenVMS. Which runs on Alpha.
Compaq is very dedicated to the Alpha processor in Unix land - the Alpha version of NT sold in such miniscule amounts that this annoucement is not much of a surprise. The performance of emulated x86 software on Alpha was marginal at best on NT.
I believe that after some point, Digital fixed it so that, despite the processor being EXACTLY the same, Alpha's made to boot NT cannot boot DU (I'm not a CS/EE type, I just recall something about DEC going from ARC to Alpha BIOS or some such vs SRM for DU, presumably in order to protect its IP.) I also believe that what might, in this sense, be called "DU Alpha's" are AT LEAST twice as expensive as "NT Alpha's" for the same quality hardware. Finally, it seems to me that most of today's Alpha/Linux boxes started life as NT machines. Now, with NT on Alpha dead and, presumably, only SRM machines available from now on, does this imply that, despite Compaq's professed love for Linux, we Alpha/Linux users are stuck with DU priced machines? Any CS geeks in the know out there care to enlighten the rest of us?
you can swap CPU's while the power is on - wooohooo! yep if your quake game is running too slow, borrow an Alpha from your neighbor, pop it in, and start fragging!
I don't think you can do it now; aren't 21264's socketed? They're talking about doing Slot A alphas sometime around the end of this year/beginning of next year. I also don't think current K7 chipsets support the Alpha and vice versa; but again, they're talking about support in the future. So the answer right now is no, you can't, but give it six months, and you might well be able too.
The decision to drop the Alpha NT support was not Microsoft's, it was Compaq's. Look at http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?9 90820.pintdump.htm for info. Compaq supplied nearly all of the engineers who wrote the kernel and ported code to the architecture, and now they will be gone. MS says they will still support the platform, but Compaq just cut off an arm and a leg's worth of the project staff. I'm sure Alpha can survive without MS, the question is will Compaq let it. I'm not sure what thier stradegy is, but I hope to see continued Alpha development, afterall they bought DEC for a reason, right?
Microsoft operating systems development on Alpha is over.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Microsoft is NOT developing anymore on Alpha. They say so themselves. Please check out this article and the section titled "No Future Releases of Microsoft Products on 32-Bit or 64-bit Alpha Platform.
-Rg
Don't pet the burning dog
Microsoft is NOT developing anymore on Alpha. They say so themselves. Please check out this article and the section titled "No Future Releases of Microsoft Products on 32-Bit or 64-bit Alpha Platform."
-Rg
Don't pet the burning dog
It's true that Compaq's compilers are generally superior to gcc on Alpha.
There are solutions on the horizon, some available today. Compaq has already released CPML math libs for Linux. The fortran compiler is in beta, and the C compiler will be released soon.
In short, the performance difference between Tru64 and Linux will narrow greatly using Compaq's compilers.
I was interested in the comment above about Intel pushing technology that is 15 years old. I don't believe that is correct. People have been working on Merced for 7 years to get it finished. They didn't develope it 15 years ago. I think Merced and those that follow will make damn good processors. Up until maybe the latest AMD processor, no others have been able to compete. Intel doesn't try to monopolize anything. If they wanted it bad enough, when they bought half of digital they could have taken the Alpha and put it to bed. It seems everyone thinks that every company wants to have a monopoly. I doubt that is the case. I heard from Craig Barrett's mouth that he would rather have AMD around. Without competition companies are not as productive.
People, their what's for dinner.
Don't blame MS. It's compaq's fault. They fired the Alpha-Windows team. Hmm... so Compaq got sick of paying to develop somebody else's OS? Gee, poor MS.
i'm not sure exactly what you mean, but you are aware that NT was _not_ developed on x86, right? NT was developed on MIPS.
Of course Intel wants AMD around. If AMD were to disappear, the FTC would be down Intel's throats. It's also part of the reason Microsoft wants Apple around.
It is the OS vendor's job to port their own fscking OS to other platforms. Not the hardware manufacturer's job.
Hey potty mouth:
Ever heard of Sun Microsystems?
Ever heard of SGI?
Ever heard of Digital (now, gone, of course)?
Ever heard of Apple?
Agreed, age alone does not make a good criticism.
However, in the name of backwards compatibility, Intel has hobbled their x86 architecture line.
Speaking from an architectural standpoint, the Alpha is beautiful. DEC loused up the marketing of it, but it is from a technology standpoint incredible.
The rest of the world (outside Intel) has moved to 64-bit processors. When they enter that arena next year.. err. two years from now.. umm.. maybe five years from now, they'll be competing against companies that have offered 64-bit solutions for many years. Personally, I think Intel will suffer in the server market at that point. Not the home computer segment, but definately with servers.
The Alpha architecture is partially under the control of Intel, because they acquired some DEC facilities when Compaq was taking over.
Last summer around July a friend had a meeting with the friendly folks from Intel.
They put it in so many words:
"At Intel we build Intel chips."
So you might need to tone down the pipe-dreams about Alpha competing with Intel.
Secondly, MS dropped the ball on Alpha only because *Compaq* announced it would stop supporting NT on the Alpha. First it was announced that 32b support would go, then the brilliant management decided 64b NT would not be supported either. The engineers at DEC-West (the Pacific Northwest facility which used to do all the NT development and credited with the excellent emulation layer FX!32) dont have jobs anymore.
Wonder of wonders Compaq still supports OpenVMS. Apparently they are trying to position the Alpha platform for Tru64, OpenVMS and Linux.
Except for very high-performance applications, Alpha is just not price-competitive. Don't get me wrong: I am very impresed with the Alpha family. At work I have a dual-proc 533mhz Ultimate WKS. Alpha shines at scientific computing and highend. But for things like web servers, you can get 4 or 8-way PIIIs that support clustering, much cheaper than the Alpha system with comparable performance. Once Merced comes out the gap will be closed even more.
The idea of "Alpha at home" will not fly with consumers.
I've worked with a lot of Alpha's. All the way from the pizza box 233's to the new DS10. I've NEVER seen NT loaded on one, EVER. I don't think that it's really that relevant. The company I'm at now uses VMS, Digital Unix, and Linux on our Alphas, but the Alpha version of NT is never even considered. It's a joke, really.
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--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
In these cases, the hardware manufacturer IS the OS vendor, so in effect, the OS vendor is taking responsibility for their own OSes. Unlike poor, poor, Microsoft. Boo hoo. Can't get anyone else to port their bloated unstable poorly documented code to another platform.
Um, really, sorry about the potty-mouth thing. I just get really worked up about this one particular issue, because if NT isn't on a particular platform, it's Microsoft's fault, nobody else's. Did Intel do Solaris x86? No.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
How do you measure that Alpha NT "wasn't selling well" when every NT CDROM that I have ever seen included the binaries for i386 and Alpha. I suppose the shipped-with-OS count does matter, but once a retail boxed NT is sold, what hardware it gets installed on is up to the purchaser.
Granted, probably very few copies of Windows NT sold at BestBuy end up on Alpha systems.
You've got it completely backward. Your argument matters from Microsoft's perspective, but not from Compaq's. What matters to them is how many Alphas they are selling to run NT. Compaq probably makes negligible money when they sell a copy of NT on any platform (Microsoft makes most of the money). If NT was only selling 5% of Alpha machines, then it was selling poorly on Alpha.
I don't think age is so much of an issue. After all, the Alpha architecture is from 1992. Here's the difference. A quote from the preface of the first edition of the Alpha Architecture Reference Manual. Richard Sites wrote this:
"We set a 15-25 year design horizon (longevity) and tried to avoid any design elements that we thought would become limitations during this time."
I'm actually one of the engineers working on the Alpha NT project. I think the Alpha is a beautifully designed system. That's why we're (understandably) kind of disappointed. Reguardless of my opinions of Microsoft, working on the Alpha has been a joy. I recomend that everyone who can should get theirselves an Alpha and start working on Linux. I intend to.
Many traditional Unix houses avoided Alpha systems for slower more expensive Unix machines from competitors because they took Digital's NT support as a sign that the company still didn't REALLY support Unix and might one day drop Unix support altogether.
Sun in particular stole away a lot of traditional Digital customers because they were the only major vendor that didn't pollute/dilute their message by playing around with NT. I think that HP and SGI both also suffered from confusing their traditional customers with mixed signals.
The move away from NT might give Tru64 Unix and perhaps even VMS a renewed respect in the industry.
I would agree, especially in shops that have traditionally been Digital shops. I think that if nothing else, this certainly will also give Linux the benefit of increased credibility.
One of the cool things about the Alpha is it's flexability. It can do either. But it doesn't really matter from a performance standpoint.
Imagine all the people... Computing for today... woo hoo... Some say I am a dreamer I'm not the only one Some day we'll all install Linux And the world will be as one
Read the comments about WinCrap running on Intel Merced.
If by "most NT users" you mean workstation users, you're right.
Well, I was specifically thinking of such things as high end CAD workstations. In server space, you are correct that app availability is far less of a problem (which is one reason that Linux is gaining much faster in the server arena than on the desktop). Unfortunately, there seems to be this perception amongst IT pointy haired bosses that you have to run your servers on the same type of hardware as your clients are on (which I know to be bogus since I've used RISC UNIX based machines as servers to disparate hardware UNIX boxes and PC's quite successfully). But the reality for a company like Compaq is that they are more likely to sell x86 based NT servers than Alpha based ones, especially when it is perceived that Alpha is expensive.
As they are still building versions of NT for the Alpha. MS is even building 64 bit version of Win2000 for the Alpha. That link sure does tell a different story, tell me why my roomie came home yesterday with the latest version of NT5 for the Alpha? Usually when you drop a product, you DROP it. You dont wait a month keeping the workers busy then slowly stop support.
But the reality for a company like Compaq is that they are more likely to sell x86 based NT servers than Alpha based ones, especially when it is perceived that Alpha is expensive.
I always thought that Compaq should put an Alpha system in a nice beige Proliant rack case and call it something ike the Proliant 9000A - "the fastest Windows NT server" or something. IT Managers are otherwise falling over themselves to buy huge NT boxes, it's just that for some reason Alpha hardware has seemed unknown and scary.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I'm following the Alpha processors since 1992 and they are *really cool chips*.
I ran a Alpha Linux box for a while. What is annoying: you can't get programs that are delivered as binaries (a Netscape 2 stolen from Digital Unix was the only browser besides Mosaic).
I think support has got better and a 21264 with Linux would be a cool box today.
NTSI.com sells the top of the line alpha. And a note on number crunching applications, the 21264 667 MHZ machine will crunch a SETI block in 3 hours 56 minutes. An optimized client for the same machine will run the block in a little over 1 hour. That is speed. -red
You seem real litterate there pal!
Not everyone needs microsoft to survive :)
j-a-w-a-d------------------------------
what's the purpose of spam-proofing signatures?
i dont display scores, and my threshhold is -1. post accordingly.
Discuss
I thought the market for Alpha was Digital Unix. That is certainly the way Compaq has been positioning it. Not that NetBSD is in any small way undersupported on Alpha. . .
They should stick to that crap that they do well. THe home PC business. Windows is designed for a computer illerate human. Not in production on the server side.
Sosumi. just kidding. DONT!
1. In general, very. IIRC, you can get a 533Mhz 21264 for like 1500 bucks or something. It's tempting :) :) :) :) Actually, there's a couple of other vendors that you should be able to get one from, VA Linux comes to mind a s possibily. API may have a list of vendors on their site, but I'm not sure.
2. The Alpha processors are the current speed kings of the world. Being fully RISC and 64bit, any x86 32bit processor cannot compare.
3. Yes, they are available to the general public...if you can afford them
4. I don't know of any specific distribution that is optimized only for Alpha use, but I know RedHat ships an Alpha CD with it's distro.
5. Alpha's have just about ALWAYS supported SMP
Where do you think the Athlon's EV6 bus came from?!
6. I'm not sure of the performance, but it DOES scale much better than PIII's. It's still not linear (I can't image what would be needed to get a linear plot in SMP with current tech), but you get a larger increase with each added processor than with Intel.
7. Compaq
A few questions:
1. How expensive are these things?
2. What kind of performance do they get compared to something like the Athlon?
3. Are the available to the general public?
4. Is there a Linux distro that is optimized for use with these?
6. Is there a multi-processor motherboard that supports these?
7. What kind of performance does it get if it exists?
8. Where can I get one?
Kintanon
I hope I don't get first post, I hate that.
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
The Alpha is a good chip, and I'm not surprised that they think it can survive on the Linux, *BSD and Dec Unix markets. Those three probably made up 99% of their sales, anyway.
But if they can get the chip to cost less, so that home users can afford it, we could be on the brink of a major revolt in the computer market. With no NT/9x there, Microsoft is closed out of any market Compaq forge for the Alpha. And if that market starts creeping into the home, that's going to cause a major shift in the industry.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
even billy
zA
The wording was a little off. NT 4.0 on Alpha was/is native. Using a software translation program from DEC, FX!32, you could run x86 Win32 programs on an Alpha NT 4.0 system. However, it was a 32-bit OS on a 64-bit chip. Alpha Linux (available from alot of folks like Red Hat and Debian and Suse to name a few) is 64-bit out of the box. Check out http://www.alpha-processor.com for their motherboards and vendors who sell them.
What's my Karma Mr. Burns? "Excellent"
"The Alpha's design made it incompatible with Intel processors. The Alpha can't run Microsoft Windows software without an additional program called an emulator, which makes the Alpha work like a Pentium chip."
Was Alpha support really emulated, or is the author just using the wrong wording? I was always under the impression that NT for the DEC Alpha was at least some sort of native port of the x86 code. Can anyone out there give some insight as to what NT 4 (or Windows 2000) for Alpha really consisted of under the hood?
http://207.240.121.247/airport.jpg if that url doesn't show u where windows belongs and doesn't belong..then u got problems.
Hrm... this sure says something for freely available source code. :)
NT nativly supported alpha, but only in 32bit mode. Also, very few windows apps were ported nativly to alpha, so most people apps had to run in an emulator.
I know everybody likes to trash Microsoft but there is another monopolist - Intel.
Let's face it, Intel have been pushing a technology that is over 15 years old.
Now that the Alpha seems to have assured support, hopefuly there is potentially SERIOUS competition to Intel (AMD produce great chips but when it comes to competing on price Intel have too much financial muscle to lose).
Why?
A) The Alpha has a superior design
B) Linux(or BSD) runs on it
C) Linux and associated applications port easily to other architectures
D) Alpha and linux are ideally matched for server and heavyweight computing/network uses.
E) The designs of both these products also result in stability.
There is a huge amount of potential with this combination and let's face it - makes computing interesting again!
Hey, if I can get an affordable computer, with a real OS, that will not fail me on bigfloat division and isn't uniquely branded, I'm ready to sign.
:)
www.pricewatch.com might be a good place to start looking.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
But... all together now... "Will they be Open Source?"
no. Digital spend a ton of money developing them. You will probably have to PAY for the binaries too.
Athalon uses the same bus as Alpha. Do they have the same package too? Can you plug an Alpha into an Athalon mobo and vice versa? Would be cool.
www.atipa.com sells Alpha based Linux boxes.
most RISC cpus have both big and little endian modes. usually one or the other mode is better supported by the rest of the hardware on the mobo and is the default. for example, alpha defaults to little endian and ppc defaults to big endian.
also, nt was ported to mips. i'm not sure if nt ran it in little endian or big endian (default).
AMD is in a tough spot right now. They have the top chip out on the market. This is their chance to get their foot hold in the market or else slide out as Cyrix did. I really hope that they get that foot hold, but I fear that right now it looks like they won't. I have yet to see a real paper or TV ad for the K7. I could say AMD to my parents (who I think are of a relatively similar mindset to that of most of America's poulation) and they would maybe blink. AMD has to get on the stick and get their name out there. This means a head on media blitz. It also means getting salepeople at retailers and custom build shops to start talking about the K7 when a potential buyer walks in. Most people looking to get a computer know three companies: Microsoft, Apple, and Intel. There are no others. AMD needs to change that or else they might as well start selling off technology, patents, and building space right now.
As for a partnership with Compaq/Alpha... Bad move right now. Unless they can swing it for little cost, they should concentrate on selling what they have, not finding more/new technology to bring down with the company later.
Funny
/adj./
middle-endian
Not big-endian or little-endian. Used of perverse byte orders such as 3-4-1-2 or 2-1-4-3, occasionally found in the packed-decimal formats of minicomputer manufacturers who shall remain nameless. See NUXI problem. Non-US hackers use this term to describe the American mm/dd/yy style of writing dates (Europeans write dd/mm/yy).
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Indeed. HP renewed their credibility a bit after they got rid of their corporate mole, altho he went straight over to SGI and did a number on them. The only vendor able to maintain some credibility pushing multiple platforms would be IBM, but they are a special case when it comes to multiple platforms. And they havent really attempted to palm off NT as some sort of mission critical OS of the future.
Since when is 'fsck' a dirty word, Mr. Oh-so-high-and-mighty Anonymous Coward?
Sheesh. Someone censors themselves, and they still get attitude from anal-retentive moral crusaders. That is pretty sad. Some people are just too damned easily offended. Maybe people need to be offended sometimes or their brains will shut off and they will quit thinking.
Compaq can also move their Tandem non-stop line onto the Alpha chip.
Can? I believe they already have in the Tandem Himalaya series. Or at least they are in the process of doing so.
If your CIO was stupid enough to buy into Microsoft marketing, you need to find another gig. Microsoft needed Alpha for its bleeding edge performance (Witness NT's Scalability Day, dubbed Saleability Day by the press because everything was running on the most expensive Alpha hardware available), but MS never gave any support other than lip service to the architecture (especially to ISV's like the one I work at).
SCALABILITY is NOT a buzzword. If you need it, then don't consider NT until 2000 is running on McKinley (vaporware for another what, two years?)
I am a big fan of Alex Greenspun's photo.net. His views are quite simple. If you need enterprise class services, go with a big commercial Unix. It's a freakin' no brainer! True, NT MIGHT work, but why would anyone want to pay for the priviledge of being Microsoft's guinea pig (Like the Chicago Stock Exchange!)
The same code that I develop on an Ultra5 workstation is binary compatible with a Ultra10k 64 processor SMP server. That is an example of scalability that is JUST BEGINNING to creep into the rarified air of the mainframe. I have a saying: "Today, there is something unglamorous about things that just work." and I believe this is true. People are attracted to the bleeding edge. Just don't feel too betrayed when you get screwed over.
1. Bring down the price on the 21264's to somewhere near the range of PIII's.
2. More good games for Linux! On both x86 and Alpha. Seems like most people who want the latest'n'greatest want it for games, not number crunching.
3. More GUI's and other hand-holding screen candy for luring the rest of the Winxx users away and helping them set up their Linux systems.
If these happen, then PIII/K7 would pretty quickly become 'low end' chips. No more celery-type chips. Maybe no more MS after a few years, if they don't adapt. People might be lured to Linux at home for games, and notice that they can do everything they can do in winxx except crash the system. Maybe 1 above will happen when the 21364's are released, hopefully 2 and 3 will happen sooner.
Do standard pc components (NIC, video, etc) work in Alpha mobo's? Seems like they should, but anyone know for sure?
M
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
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This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
HAL9000
I work for Compaq, (having worked for DEC over 5 years now). It was Compaqs decision not to support NT/Win2k NOT Microsofts. Microsoft is just trying to spin this whole thing but I thought the truth should come out. Cheers, Me
I wonder what AMDs strategy is for dealing with Merced once it finally ships. It'll take them a while to clone it and they risk losing the momentum they've finally gained.
It would be kind of neat if AMD and Alpha Processor merged. They could share development costs and AMD would gain a 64-bit alternative to Merced. They might even be able to build hardware x86 emulation into the Alpha (although I'm not really sure that would be useful - maybe for Wine).
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
That that screenshot is of either Windows 95 or Windows 98, don't you? It isn't NT.
Microsoft isnt abandoning the Alpha. They are mearly droping support for 32 bit NT. They are still working on 64 bit version of NT for Alpha's. If you assume that MS has dropped ALL support for the Alpha then your an idiot. Course all you see if MS dropping support, you dont even see the facts that Compaq is restructuring and MS is has stopped support cause there will no longer be on campus Alpha support. Contracts between the two companies prevent MS from hiring the Alpha techies. When it breaks on x86 it exploads on Alpha.
Attention Moderation Person:
l ender/shw_item.ws?di_id=10685
I saw this message posted on the Blender News Server and it pointed to some 1998 messages titled "The Emperor Has No Clothes!".
http://goethe.bowtie.nl/cgi-bin/web-ssql/news-b
Those messages ("The Emperor Has No Clothes!") show a history of the Microsoft/DEC 64 Bit NT and gives references.
In any case, the information would apply to this thread and you may present it as you like.
TIA
nt
Compaq can also move their Tandem non-stop line onto the Alpha chip.
CPU_______________SPECint95__SPECfp95
alpha 667 (21264)_______32_______54
alpha 500 (21164)_______15_______20
intel PIII 500___________20_______15
intel PII 450____________18_______13
Adults are obsolete children. - Dr. Seuss
Links please. I am very interested.
That's a good point.
The way I see it is that the technology behind the x86 family is becoming a limiting factor.
Unix(and it's various flavours) although based on 'old' technology seems to benefit from it's design and history.
Advantageous?
Disadvantageous?
Doesn't really matter?
Anything relevant to Intel x86 also being little endian?
(just to get a little discussion going)
Check slashdot as of a week ago. MS says (on their site) that there will be NO 64BIT Alpha-NT.
Alphas are the dog's dangly bits if you are doing any sort of numerically intensive work. However, performance is typically better under OSF1/Tru64/Digital Unix than linux, as the DEC native compiler does a better job of optimising code, and has a faster maths library than gcc.
Quite a few labs tend to fork out for third party compilers and librarys for linux, in order to get the best out of the hardware. I hear it is possible to compile static binaries under OSF1 and run them under alpha-linux though...
I offer the following quote from the Microsoft website:
o mpaq.asp
*********************************
No Future Releases of Microsoft Products on 32-bit or 64-bit Alpha Platform
There will be no future releases of Microsoft products for the 32-bit or 64-bit Alpha platform. This means there will not be
32-bit Alpha versions of Windows 2000, beginning with Release Candidate 2, nor will there be new 32-bit Alpha releases of
SQL Server, Exchange, or other 32-bit Alpha BackOffice products. There will also be no 64-bit version of Windows or
BackOffice developed for the Alpha platform.
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This is available at http://www.microsoft.com/NTServer/nts/news/msnw/c