[Info-vax] Chinese Alpha?

[Hans Vlems]

On 2 mei, 03:25, Michael Kraemer <M.Krae... at gsi.de> wrote:
> Keith Parris schrieb:
>
> > "SW3 aka SW1600 is a 16-core, 64-bit RISC processor, with each core
> > looking a lot like
>
> what does that mean?
> At some point, all CPUs look very similar.
>
> > an improved version of the 21164A EV56 Alpha core."
>
> That would be an EV6, no?
> Now, how old is this part?
> Should I be impressed?

No, it's an EV5 manufactured in a process designed to produce the EV6
generation.
The EV56 is found in the Alpha Server 1200 and 4100 series, among
others, and in the latter ran at its highest clockspeed of 600 MHz
(IIRC).
In 1998 you'd surely have been impressed (given what Intel was doing
with the Pentium II and III at the time).
Today it is of interest to hobbyists like me ;-)
Alpha always was power hungry, and until the blades arrived I guess
nobody noticed or cared because compared to their predecessors
(mainframes) an Alpha wasn't that bad at all.
Today handhelds are more important if only because the potential
market is a lot bigger. Power is a function of die size and clock
speed and perhaps on a modern production line an EV5 or EV6 class
Alpha might be a very cost effective (read dirt cheap) way to produce
a 64 bit computing engine running at, say, 1.2 GHz without spending
years of development or paying royalties to others (something the
Chinese don't like doing anyway).
If you're looking for just such a solution then it might be feasible.
I wouldn't invest money in such a plan...
Hans