[Info-vax] Poulson at hot-chips 2011

[Neil Rieck]

>
> Not quite correct.
> DEC themselve killed it.
> When they sold Alpha to intel in 1997,
>

I'm not sure that J.F. would agree with this :-) Many of us were
unaware of Alphacide until it happened in 2001.

Seriously, while I remember a financial transfer between Intel and DEC
at that time. IIRC, in involved "Intel being caught stealing
intellectual property from DEC (they proved it was stuff showed to
Intel after Intel signed a NDA with DEC; then DEC showed Intel some
architectural plans for Alpha which Intel then used) -AND- the sale of
the Hudson Mass semiconductor plant which DEC should not have built.

IIRC, Alphacide occurred on Compaq's watch during the time that Curly
was negotiating with Carly just prior to the actual "merger" of HP and
Compaq. Now to be fair, this article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Alpha

states: "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, effectively killing the product."

(what is the difference between "Alpha architecture was sold" and
"sold Alpha all intellectual property"? I wonder if the author meant
to write "Alpha architecture" was licensed rather than sold)

So did DEC sell Alpha in 1997?
Or did Compaq sell Alpha in 1998?
Or did HP demand that Compaq sell Alpha during pre-merger talks in
2001 making it an HPQ decision?

I'm not sure, but HP kept selling PA-RISC based products in the market
place for at least two years longer than Alpha.