[Info-vax] Dave Cutler, Prism, DEC, Microsoft, etc.

[Michael Kraemer]

George Cook schrieb:
> In article <hd49hq$m91$01$1 at news.t-online.com>, Michael Kraemer <M.Kraemer at gsi.de> writes:

> 
> No.  It was not.  One more time, from Wikipedia:
> 
> "The Alpha architecture was sold, along with most parts of DEC,
> to Compaq in 1998. Compaq, already an Intel customer, decided to
> phase out Alpha in favor of the forthcoming Hewlett-Packard/Intel
> Itanium architecture, and sold all Alpha intellectual property to
> Intel in 2001"
> 
> I suspect that you are confusing the sale of the Hudson fab with
> the sale of the IP.
>  

No, I'm well aware of the difference,
but I think it does not matter really.
The 1997 deal with intel (and a similar one with Samsung)
effectively marked alpha's sell out,
even if DEC kept IP rights on paper.

Moreover,
intel agreed to manufacture Alpha, a possible competitor to their
upcoming IA64.
At about the same time it was planned to port DEC Unix to IA64.
All that makes only sense if alpha's death was already sealed,
maybe secretly, with the 1997 deal.
Compaq just had to do the cleanup when
the time was right, in 2001, with the HP takeover in sight.