[Info-vax] Chinese Alpha?

[David Froble]

JF Mezei wrote:
> Michael Kraemer wrote:
>> I don't get it what magical design features the Alpha has, which
>> would make it still attractive, even if it had been developed further.
> 
> 
> Alpha is the only native 64 bit architectire that worked and performed
> well. The only other native 64 bit is IA64 and we all knwo who well it
> TANKED !
> 
> The thing about Alpha is that it was cleanly designed. And this is what
> alled DEC engineers to implement features way before others.
> 
> Remember that 64 bit x86 came from the 8086. So there is a lot of
> baggage there that makes improving it harder.

You seem to forget IBM and Power, which is I believe 64 bit (I don't know much about 
Power, could be wrong) and as far as performance, was close to Alpha.  It was the only CPU 
that was competitive with Alpha in the past, and I doubt IBM has slacked off on 
development, so might be the best performer today.

As for the itanic, are you using one?  The process shrinks and on chip memory (or 
something) has produced some decent performance.  We now (I believe) have all of our 
customers on IA-64 systems, performance is good, and the pricing of VMS is much lower than 
it was with DEC.

The other side of that issue is we can now see the development efforts, or lack there-of, 
that Intel makes when there is no competition.  IA-64 in comparison to Intel's x86 
products is at a virtual stand-still.  Some had predicted this.  Some feel IA-64 has 
fulfilled Intel's real purpose, killing off competition.  If so, then a valid question is 
of what use is IA-64 to Intel?  As much competition as they could kill off is gone, what 
choice does anyone really have?  It's Intel or count on your fingers, or the remaining 
competition such as AMD which is still x86.

I do hate (hawk, spit) "good enough", but what are the options?  At least we don't have 
"not good enough and no options".