[Info-vax] Chinese Alpha?

[John Wallace]

On Apr 27, 4:11 pm, Rich Jordan <jor... at ccs4vms.com> wrote:
> Reportedly China is considering a 'national' CPU architecture (ISA at
> least) decision for all government funded projects.
>
> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/127791-china-plans-national-unif...
>
> "There are at least five existing ISAs on the table for consideration
> — MIPS, Alpha, ARM, Power, and the homegrown UPU — but the Chinese
> leadership has also mooted the idea of defining an entirely new
> architecture."

A similar rumo(u)r was reported last November, e.g. in The Register in
a throwaway comment at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/14/top_500_supers_nov_2011/page2.html

Closer to here, that article was then briefly discussed on
comp.sys.dec, post title "Alpha processors manufactured in China?"
dated November 16.

A comment on The Register's article asking for substantion for the
Alpha claim got no responses. A more forthright comment of mine was
rejected by The Register's Ministry of Truth.

I remember at the time of that article I attempted to follow any chain
of facts leading to evidence. There wasn't any I could find (as an
outsider with limited resources).

That doesn't mean it isn't happening, some might think it would be
quite sensible if it was happening (the architecture is proven, freely
available existing reference designs are proven albeit dated,
available architecture-specific software is proven. MIPS in general is
currently receiving the Last Rites, even in the embedded market, so
wouldn't be an obvious choice unless there were special
circumstances).

If you want 32bit addressing and don't need Windows, ARM has a great
deal going for it.

If you want 64bit addressing, the picture becomes less clear.

But what are they actually up to in China? We'll have to wait and see.