[Info-vax] Alpha Personal Workstation question

[Michael Kraemer]

Paul Sture schrieb:

> In early 1997 the latest greatest Intel offering was 200 MHz (I was 
> advised to go for a 2 cpu 133 MHz solution instead on cost grounds and 
> was not disappointed).  If I have interpreted the serial number of my
> PWS 600au correctly, that was made in early 1997.
> 
> DEC could ride on Intel's marketing of clock speeds.  It was certainly 
> easy to impress folks who had never heard of the Alpha by quoting clock 
> rates.

Well, folks were certainly also (negatively) impressed by the price tag
of those Alphas, and how few native software was available (compared
to regular PCs) and how few MHz were effectively left after running
non-native software through emulation.

> Even the servers were limited, and there was a trade off between maximum 
> memory and the number of processors you could physically fit.
> 
> http://www.icc4it.co.uk/servers/hp_alphaserver/alphaserver-8200.php#tab1
> 
> "The AlphaServer 8200 5/300 supports up to 6 processors with 12 GB 
> memory, two processors with 28 GB of memory, and any combination between 
> these maximums, with 1.2 GB/sec (peak) of I/O."

Well, Wikipedia isn't the best of all sources,
but let's assume they get at least some numbers right:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaServer
tells me that in order to buy truly 64-bit Alpha machines
you had to wait almost until the turn of the millenium.
With the exception of the mentioned early Turbolasers,
which were only meant for the very rich, I presume.
That's not too different from the other RISC vendor's
lineups.

> Which meant you could compile and test on a workstation and then run on a 
> server which did have more memory.

And again, not at all different from what was common practice
with HP, IBM or Sun gear.