[Info-vax] Chinese Alpha?

[David Froble]

Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 5/3/2012 12:16 AM, David Froble wrote:
>> Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> On 5/2/2012 12:35 AM, David Froble wrote:
>>>> When it was being competitively developed, nothing was faster than
>>>> Alpha.
>>>>
>>>> As has been mentioned elsewhere, some people will pay for performance.
>>>>
>>>> To get to your question, you need to ask, "why was it fast?" Perhaps
>>>> because the design was better than the competition? If so, and if there
>>>> has not been any new designs that might be better, then a competitively
>>>> developed Alpha might still be the fastest single processor available.
>>>> When talking multiple cores, the "glue" on the chip, memory 
>>>> controllers,
>>>> interprocessor communications, and such in EV7 and EV7z, even with the
>>>> larger die size was doing things that out performed competing CPUs that
>>>> had continued development and smaller die size.
>>>>
>>>> So, if the Alpha could be successfully shrunk down to say 35 nm, or 
>>>> even
>>>> 22 nm which Intel has just released, and with a large on chip cache as
>>>> the IA-64 has, perhaps it might still out-perform anything else
>>>> available.
>>>>
>>>> Now, that is a mighty big "if", and what it would cost I have no idea,
>>>> other than it wouldn't be cheap. So, commercially, might it be 
>>>> viable? I
>>>> really have no idea. It would depend upon how many might pay for such
>>>> performance.
>>>
>>> A shrink to current technology could make it run at 3-4 GHz.
>>>
>>> Or about 3-5 times faster than back then.
>>>
>>> That is not enough.
>>>
>>> But modify it from 1 to 8 cores per socket.
>>>
>>> Then it will be 24-40 times faster than back then
>>> (for multi thread/process usage).
>>>
>>> It is starting to look like something.
>>>
>>> Double all 3 levels of cache and do some optimizations
>>> based on what is learned since then to double performance.
>>>
>>> Then it will be 48-80 times faster than back then.
>>>
>>> But the first item require a B$ investment in production
>>> facility.
>>>
>>> And the two last items require significant design work that
>>> will take a lot of time (years).
>>
>> The real problem is, the cost per chip must pay for the development and
>> production. Here is where numbers matter. If you cannot sell enough
>> chips, then the cost will be too high.
>>
>> I was very disappointed to see the end of Alpha. But I'm not blind to
>> the economic realities. The CPUs going into tablets, phones, and such
>> are a much better economic investment than what might power a much
>> smaller number of very powerful servers. Such is reality.
> 
> The fixed costs is very large and increasing relative to the
> variable cost for CPU's.
> 
> This will inevitable lead to fewer CPU producers.
> 
> Intel and AMD will survive because they sell desktop
> CPU's in the 2 or 3 digit millions per design.
> 
> I do not have much confidence in Power or SPARC long term.
> 
> Arne
> 

Do be careful when betting against IBM.

Got some IBM stock that was purchased at $104 and 2 days ago it was at $206

The thing with IBM is that they are not just a semiconductor mfg.  They can afford to take 
a loss in one department, if that allows other departments to do well.  If Power gives 
them an edge in sales, perhaps that's better for the company than just being another "me too".

DEC could have been the same, but poor management destroyed them.