[Info-vax] Chinese Alpha?

[John Wallace]

On Apr 30, 6:50 am, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spam... at vaxination.ca> wrote:
> glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
> > Now, it might be that some details of old Alpha implementations
> > could be useful in new designs, but most of the lower level
> > (gate level) ideas, as far as I know, wouldn't.
>
> OK, so whatever Samsung has about Alpha wouldn't be of much value to
> Samsung's endeavours in the mobile market with the ARM architecture today.
>
> So if Alpha gives Samsung no competetitive advantage today, it makes it
> easier for them to sell it off to the Chinese (assuming they are allowed
> to, which I doubt they could do without HP's approval)

ARM today is a 32bit architecture doing very nicely in a 32bit market.
There is also a 64bit market which the ARM v8 architecture announced
last year will address. It's hard to see what ARM and their licensees
might need from the remains of Alpha that they haven't already got,
but then the future's kind of hard to predict sometimes.

Incidentally, it may well be true to say Samsung are bigger than Nokia
in mobiles, but since Elop arrived on his mission to finish off Nokia,
that's not real difficult. Perhaps more interestingly, Samsung have
two bites at the cherry in the mobile market, because they make
component level products used in product with other people's trendy
badges, and also they make stuff which sells in Samsung's own phones
too. In the iPhone 4, Samsung supply most of the most expensive
components other than the actual display [1]: the ARM processor, the
DRAM, the 16GB flash...

Now, what is there to look at outside the mobile market, and how
significant is it? In the Windows-dependent market, it still looks
like x86 or irrelevance; Windows on ARM seems to be deliberately
hobbled. But as more and more users and IT departments realise that
Windows is not "adding value", what will happen to x86 as a
consequence? Various Linuxes already run quite satisfactorily on
various ARMs, and more could be added with little effort.

In the massive non-Windows market for consumer and professional
embedded electronics, everything from a router to a TV and up probably
has an ARM Inside already.

In the server room, chips from people like Calxeda plugged into a
passive backplane can end up using less than 5W per 4GB server. E.g. a
Proliant SL6500-style box from a printer company called HP [2] can do
you a 4U unit which houses up to 288 servers (in trays of 72 servers
on cards of 4 servers). Handy for a HYPErvisor-free cloud/web
infrastructure, or maybe even for virtual desktop for the boring
routine stuff once the Board tell the IT department that the Wintel
security nightmare and upgrade treadmill is no longer necessary or
cost-effective for substantial parts of their wider business needs.

Actually the Calxeda high level concept is remarkably similar to the
Alpha 21066/21068 concept re-invented. The 21066 was a 21064 Alpha to
which you could just add DRAM and just add PCI. No Northbridge, no
Southbridge, it's all built in on "the processor". But the
21066/21068's reduced system cost and complexity (and performance)
weren't enough to bring system builders on board in an era when Linux
as an alternative to Windows was still considered radical. Have times
changed?

[1] http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/iPhone-4-Carries-Bill-of-Materials-of-187-51-According-to-iSuppli.aspx
[2] http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2011/111101xa.html and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PIajg_Htx0&feature=player_embedded and
even
http://www.hp.com/go/moonshot