[Info-vax] Poulson at hot-chips 2011

[John Reagan]

"Neil Rieck" <n.rieck at sympatico.ca> wrote in message 
news:8bdf9e9e-04c7-4f63-a684-86dfeea56b34 at d18g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
> >
>> Not quite correct.
>> DEC themselve killed it.
>> When they sold Alpha to intel in 1997,
>>
>
> 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)
>

Yes, licensed, not sold.

Compaq licensed the Alpha technology (patents, etc.) to Intel for their use. 
As far as I know, Compaq (and its successor, HP) continues to own any 
patent, trademark, copyright, etc.  Compaq also transferred/sold people to 
Intel as well as buildings, manufacturing equipment, etc.  There have been 
rumors on how much Intel paid for all of this or if there was any sort of 
royalty agreement if Intel decided to use Alpha technology in future 
products.  I can honestly say that I never heard any official amount.

This was all after Compaq bought Digital.  Somebody should fix the wiki.

John