[Info-vax] Chinese Alpha?

[Michael Moroney]

glen herrmannsfeldt <gah at ugcs.caltech.edu> writes:

>Rich Jordan <jordan at ccs4vms.com> wrote:

>> "...  It is believed that the Loongson family of processors, including
>> the ShenWei SW-3 found in Sunway, were created by reverse engineering
>> a DEC Alpha CPU."

>> When you care enough to steal the very best...

>Reverse engineering is one thing, copying another.

>There are stories of a Russian 8080 made by generating masks
>directly from an extracted 8080 chip, including the intel 
>copyright symbol. (Slightly bigger and slower, though.)

In case you missed it, the phrase "When you care enough to steal the very 
best" has significance.

In the old days, the VAX was one of the favorite computers of the Soviets.
VAXen were export-restricted, so the Soviets reverse-engineered them
and made their own.  DEC engineers knew this, so on one of the Microvax
chips, they had added the phrase "When you care enough to steal the very 
best", in Russian, on the silicon, a little Easter egg for the Soviets
to find.

Perhaps someone can fill in details, such as which VAX chip it was.