End of the Alpha CPU (was: IBM Buys Rational for $2.1Billion!)

[bscott at ntisys.com]

On Fri, 6 Dec 2002, at 1:38pm, pll at lanminds.com wrote:
>> Has IA-64 really gotten so much better that is can seriously be
>> considered as a replacement for the PA-RISC and Alpha chips?
> 
> I've been lead to believe that the biggest problem with Alpha as it is
> today, is one simply of neglect.  When Compaq bought DEC, development and
> R&D on next-gen Alpha pretty much stopped.

  Even when DEC was still DEC, the Alpha was neglected.  Oh, sure, it had a
great engineering team, but one could only obtain them through DEC's sales
organization.  DEC sales often gave me the impression that they would rather
I bought from the competition.  And there was no real marketing of the Alpha
at all.  Intel's greatest idea ever was their "Intel Inside" campaign.  You
could sit a retarded monkey from the African interior in front of a TV, and
within a week, it would recognize the "Intel Inside" jingle.  Alpha might as
well be a brand of goat cheese for all the marketing DEC did for it.

  But I am more interested in recent news about IA-64.  While it is a sad
thing, it is also pretty much a given that the Alpha is deader than a
squirrel on MA-128.  For all the money Intel and HP have poured into it, I
haven't seen the Itanium line making any headlines.

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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