[Info-vax] RealWorldTech on Poulson

[Paul Sture]

In article <iusece$760$1 at Iltempo.Update.UU.SE>,
 Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:

> On 2011-07-04 09.22, Michael Kraemer wrote:
> > Jan-Erik Soderholm schrieb:
> >
> >>
> >> About geometry shrinks. Not that it realy matters, but... :-)
> >>
> >> I just checked these two pages :
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Alpha
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium
> >>
> >> It's interesting to compare the last Alpha (EV7z) and the
> >> current Itanium (Tukwila).
> >>
> >> The EV7z was released in 2004, used 180 nm and runs at 1.3 GHz.
> >> Tukwila was released 2010, uses 65 nm and runs at 1.33-1.73 GHz.
> >> Pulson (next year?) will use 32 nm.
> >>
> >> EV8 was ment to use 125 nm and run at 2 GHz.
> >>
> >> How would a EV7z/8 shrinked from 180/125 nm to 65 or 32 nm performed ?
> >> And with 24 Mb on-die cache (as Tukwila) instead of 1.75 (3 for EV8) ?
> >>
> >> The highest clock speed for an 180 nm Itanium (McKinley) was 1.0 GHz.
> >>
> >> Ah well... :-)
> >>
> >
> > Whatever technical merits can be brought to the table,
> > they don't answer the question whether the world
> > needs yet another competing CPU design.
> > I think the history of both latecomers, Alpha and Itanic,
> > shows that there's not much commercial room
> > beyond x86 and the classical RISCs.
> > Iirc the last successfull introduction of a new architecture
> > was IBM's Power, this was more than 20 years ago.
> 
> Well, the Alpha was not really a latecomer. It's also about 20 years old 
> now. And it was the first high speed CPU out there, as well as the first 
> clean 64 bit CPU. It had a lot going for it.

Alpha did indeed have a lot going for it.  My PWS is 600 MHz and 
according to my interpretation of the serial number was manufactured in 
Feb/Mar 1997.  In March 1997 I was in the market for an Intel box, and 
my supplier recommended I go for a two x 133 MHz cpu configuration since 
that would be cheaper than a single "latest and greatest" 200 MHz cpu.

Three times the speed of the fastest Intel offering.

> However, it was tied to a company that was sinking, which is a part of
> what made it fail.

Prices cannot have helped.  I don't know what my Alpha PWS cost new, but 
we did find an old advert for one at USD 20,000 (spec unknown, so not 
necessarily a true guide).  My well specced Intel box cost a fraction of 
that (circa GBP 4K).

-- 
Paul Sture