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

[Arne Vajhøj]

Keith Parris wrote:
> 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

Not surprising.

Arne