[Info-vax] OT: IBM Offering $9-10 Per Share for Sun

[Keith Parris]

Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> JF Mezei wrote:
>> Not necesaarily. Consider NSK under Compaq/Pfeiffer where he undertook
>> to port NSK to Alpha. NSK had special features that required "lockstep"
>> which was a feature that needed to be added to Alpha (scheduled to come
>> with EV7, not sure if they bothered).
...
> NSK in it current way of doing things has some special
> hardware requirements.
...
> And even how NSK works could be changed if HP decided to.

(Probably because Lockstepping started to interfere with processor 
performance) NSK changed course for Itanium and no longer requires 
Lockstep -- they took a different approach called NonStop Advanced 
Architecture (NSAA) where instead of having two pairs of lock-stepped 
processors, they instead compare the outputs of 3 processors. Cheaper, 
faster, and can use mainstream processors. See 
http://h20223.www2.hp.com/NonStopComputing/cache/77119-0-0-0-121.html