[Info-vax] OpenVMS.Org quick pool

[John Wallace]

On Aug 21, 12:15 am, Single Stage to Orbit <alex.bu... at munted.eu>
wrote:
> On Mon, 2012-08-20 at 17:34 -0400, David Froble wrote:
> > You bet.  It's an interesting question how fast an N-VAX or descendant
> > processor would run at 35 nm.
>
> No one makes Alpha chips any more, so it would be far more interesting
> to see how well these could work at the 32 nm process node. VAXs are
> strictly 32 bit architecture.
> --
> Tactical Nuclear Kittens

"VAXs are strictly 32 bit architecture."

x86 was "strictly 32 bit" too, according to Intel not all that long
ago. And then when AMD64 came out, Intel had to stop saying x86 was
"strictly 32 bit", and had to follow AMD's lead instead, leaving
Intel's proposed "industry standard 64bit" IA64 in the long grass
while AMD64 (and its Intel clone) takes over the world.

Mind you, if a miraculous resurrection were to occur, Alpha would
still seem to me like the more sensible choice rather than VAX. Not
that it matters much. For comp.os.vms it should be the software that
matters most, not The Chip Inside (tm).