HP Finally Reveals The Alpha Marvel 152
brejc8 writes "HP have revealed the new range of AlphaServer systems. The new EV7 processors show very reasonable performance figures. Revealed by the inquirer the 1GHz versions have very similar SPEC scores as the 1GHz Itanium 2 (INT_2000 of 875 and FP_2000 of 1,500). This is very intersting after HP were rumoured to ensure that "...no Alpha benchmark will be released until the Itanium platform(s) is/are faster"."
linux? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:linux? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:linux? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:linux? (Score:5, Informative)
I may work for HP, but that does not imply that my opinions are theirs.
Re:linux? (Score:2)
Re:linux? (Score:2)
It _is_ nice to check if your code will compile/work/parse or of course break on those platforms though. I am a happy user. Thanks Compaq^WHP!
Re:linux? (Score:2)
Re:linux? (Score:2)
I admit that I hate to see Alpha go away (I have a Personal Workstation 500a), but I do understand the business case behind it. PA-RISC is supposed to go away eventually too, for the same reason.
Right, now, HP has the undesirable job of maintaining _three_ high performance 64-bit processors. They designed Itanium 2 (the Itanium project is a joint Intel/HP job, Intel layed out I1, HP did I2), PA-RISC and the Compaq merger brought on the Alpha chip into the fold. That is a lot of money and baggage, and I bet that the Compaq group might still be handling some VAX support contracts too, as a lot of those machines are, surprisingly, still in use. That is a lot of money that could theoretically be saved, but I wonder how much better Alpha would be if the Itanium money went to EV8 and beyond instead, I think DEC did wonders with a much smaller R&D budget than Intel had.
The loss of Alpha is unfortunate as they still had some tricks up their sleeve for EV8, and the architecture was intended to have as much as two more decades of head room.
At least it will still be supported for a while, they still need to port VMS and maybe Tru64 to Itanium, which I'm not sure how far along that is, and how long it takes to be proven reliable.
Re:linux? (Score:2)
Re:linux? (Score:3, Informative)
Linux on UltraSparc works great, and has excellent support under Debian (although I guess that's no surprise).
Re:linux? (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh, and GCC still doesn't support all of UltraSPARC's 64-bit instructions. And no, Linux distros for UltraSPARC don't come compiled 64-bit. And last I checked (a couple months ago) I still couldn't get glibc to compile in 64-bit mode on Linux/UltraSPARC. It just choked somewhere in the middle of the build due to broken code generated by GCC.
Linux kicks ass over Slowlaris and SunOS when run on 32-bit SPARC processors. But when it comes to 64-bit UltraSPARCs it simply bites. And nobody seems to care enough about the lack of performance or support to make it better.
But Linux/UltraSPARC does make a good web server or the like. An Ultra 5 doesn't cost too much more than a similarly rated PC and is essentially immune to all r00tkits because the script kiddies don't have tools for Linux/UltraSPARC. For Linux/x86 yes, and for Solaris/UltraSPARC, but not for Linux on an UltraSPARC. You just get a weird message in your logs and the program in question just dies quietly.
Re:linux? (Score:1)
See Also... (Score:2, Interesting)
Only one? (Score:5, Funny)
I knew tech was tightening the belt, but they could only get one analyst to react enthusiastically? And you know that guy's looking over his shoulder... I'd be reacting DAMN enthusiastically if I was him.
Lemons (Score:1)
But it just reminds me of the old TV gag, where they put up a taste test of lemonade and put the cameras in plain view. Only its not lemonade, its lemon juice. You watch the people fight sour expressions to extoling their enthusiasm about the product, just for their 15 minutes.
I'm not overly pessimistic here or anything, but when you mentioned "looking over his shoulder" thats what came to mind.
________________________________
OnRoad [onlawn.net]: Tempering detroit iron with our own hot air since, well, last week.
HPs Strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
In my mind HP should either go one way or the other, not release a processor most people would claim to be better than Itanium. Why didn't Intel just buy the Alpha architecture and continue it?
I know that AMD and Intel have both dissected the EV8 planned processor, and used parts of it for themselves. EV8 was going to be 4-way SMT (Intel uses that now as HyperThreading) and have integrated Northbridge on die (same as Hammer chips).
Its a sad state of affairs when the superior architecture gets cut up and sold to different companies to produce two slightly inferior chips.
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:3, Informative)
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, when HP bought Compaq years worth of design work for the EV7 were already finished. Throwing it away would not necessarily be a profitable decision.
Talking to the folks on the Alpha design team (now the Intel advanced design team), they were not super happy about EV8 being cancelled. But such decisions usually come down to money...
The Alpha was in almost all ways a technically superior design to the IA-64. Now that the same group of architects is working for Intel, they can probably make the IA-64 run almost as well or better...
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:1)
Your assumption is that the Itanium architecture is as extensible, or more extensible than the Alpha. I'm no processor expert, but I would guess the Alpha engineers will do an excellent job on the Itanium. Will they be able to make the next Itanium better than the EV8? Hard to say... for one, the Itanium is a whole new design (compared to the Alpha, and compared to the rest of PC processors).
Hopefully a microprocessor guru can add some insight...
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:4, Informative)
Dick Sites (Score:2)
Re:Dick Sites (Score:3, Funny)
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that you have superior designers working on fixing up an inferior spec does not mean they can work miracles. When you start with something that is not as good, you will spend a lot of time catching up - time that could have been used to better an already good platform.
So, instead of a great Alpha, you'll end up with an as-good-as-the-old-Alpha Itanium.
DOD Commitments:HP Can Not Back Down (Score:3, Informative)
The sad news is no EV8. Itanium is far from being debugged and doesn't seem to be a particularly clean architecture compared with Alpha and Intel aren't particularly innovative.
Re:DOE Also (Score:2)
Is there anything public on this? I am fighting a rearguard action trying to convince management that Alphas are still relevant. It is the total absence of marketing that has really upset me with even in the Digital era, an Alpha that was off the shelf today would be compared unfavourably with a Sun or whatever that was due to be built in a year's time. Digital didn't know how to market, Compaq never understood what they had and HP just wants to kill asap so they can realise their Itanium investment with Intel.
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:3, Insightful)
EV8 was a finished product when the lots of compaq hp stuff started happening and so hp wouldnt kill it of after all that money being put into it. hp decided to suck up to intel forever now and supporting the remenents of the alpha while it makes money is still a good idea to them.
The last reson is that compaq employees would be a little hurt and dissatisfied if hp went along and killed every product they had.
Its a shame that hp dont want to push the alpha and that it was a little delayed due to the transition. If it was released a few months ago hp would have probably kept the line open for a few years longer.
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:3, Informative)
they were probably well into working on the itanic when the option to buyout alpha came along.
Its a sad state of affairs when the superior architecture gets cut up and sold to different companies to produce two slightly inferior chips.
yes, it is. and disregarding alpha for a moment, you would think after 20 so years of the pile of crap known as x86, that intel would be intelligent enough to make clean, sane cpu. instead they, of course, design the itanic. i've read about its isa and all i can say is "feature bloat". i also read a little of the hp book about porting linux. the itanic is the most overly complicated, misdesigned cpu i think has ever been made. at least when the 8086 came out, it was a good design (relatively speaking).
it's funny how intel says "epic is simple, no ooo complexity" but doesn't mention the all rediculous crap like rotating register files, etc, etc. afaict, ia64 is MORE complex than any risc chip. NOT simpler. and throwing ooo out the door is stupid. a) compilers can't predict cache misses b) gcc sucks and so, to get anywhere near decent performance, you have to use a different compiler (dec's cc, and i think just about everyone else's, outperforms gcc). i predict that intel will be forced to eventually add ooo back. at best, intel has traded ooo complexity for the complexity of all the features needed for compiler driven scheduling, AND forced compilers to be very good just to get decent performance.
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:3, Interesting)
Rotating register files and lots of the other features that Itanium has, aren't inherent in their ISA. There is nothing in EPIC that says you need rotating registers. These are just things that Intel thought would be really useful and people haven't started exploiting yet.
I think they had a good idea when they designed the ISA, but botched it a little bit on the cpu architecture. However, as compiler technology advances and software starts taking advantage of the "feature bloat" I think we will see a drastic improvement in Itanium performance.
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:2, Interesting)
it's funny how intel says "epic is simple, no ooo complexity" but doesn't mention the all rediculous crap like rotating register files, etc, etc. afaict, ia64 is MORE complex than any risc chip
Rotating register files are part of the original RISC II architecture. The Itanium has some fundamentally good design features. In a standard superscalar chip, a missed branch results in a pipeline flush, which is a huge overhead. In Itanium, all instructions are predicated, so most branch-like structures cease to exist, and instructions which are speculatively executed can simply not be retired. This can lead to a significantly higher instruction throughput. The rotating register files concept is a very good one, as it allows functions to be called without having to write registers to memory (which is slow) or cache (which is not fast).
Perhaps with regard to compiler support, Intel will follow Apple's route (which, is by definition good, since Apple are doing it) and contribute code to gcc (In Apple's case to improve AltiVec support). After all, if Linux runs faster on an Itanium, it would only help Intel sell more chips, which is what the enjoy doing most.
The Alpha has some very nice features, but slating the Itanium architecture because the Itanium and Itanium II (both of which are really intended as proof-of-concept demos rather than commercial CPUs is ludicrous.
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:2)
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:1)
I would disagree. GCC actually rules. It is fast enough to work quite well (afaik Linux can only be compiled on GCC and the performance of Linux is faster than commercial systems compiled with 'better' compilers), the third revision is looking extremely promising (even this early), and it is portable to many (most?) architectures! Additionally, as research into advanced compiler technology is conducted and applied to the program, it can't but help to get better in many ways.
Then again if they stuck to C and not C with C++, Objective-C (we'll maybe keep Objective-C), Fortran, Java, and Ada
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:1)
With these matters at stake who can blame them for not assuming Intel has the right answers. Intel, for all it's success, is a PeeCee and embedded CPU manufacturer. If Intel manages to crack the big iron market it will be a first for them.
IBM would be more than happy to assume complete market dominance once again if it's PeeCee manufacturer competition fails. MIPS isn't dead yet, and Sun isn't about to let Intel ruin SPARC.
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
Trillions more are controlled internally by such systems. VMS systems also still power major mission-critical business processes at thousands of companies.
You don't just drop a user base like that and say "ok, go convert overnight to a new processer architecture". These companies have long-term plans and are some of the biggest customers for large systems. They have already spent millions of dollars and years of effort converting from VAX to Alpha, and they aren't going to be willing or able to suddenly switch to Itanium.
For those who said "just recompile", they are missing the point. It's not just the programs which need to work absolutely and perfectly, it's the OS, and VMS on Itanium doesn't even exist yet. And once it does, it has to be proven to work reliably. These systems have to have PERFECT uptime. Sure, they have hot standbys, etc. but switching over and back is typically a painful process. Remember: much of the code which runs the world is decades old.
If HP doesn't want to lose billions of dollars worth of business, they won't be pulling the rug out from their VMS/Alpha customers any time soon, and the cancelling of the EV8 could very well be their undoing in this market. Unless they are able to come up with an absolutely reliable VMS port for Itanium and rock solid porting tools, this user base will migrate to some other platform (at great expense and effort) and it may very well be something other than HP.
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:2)
The app here may be over ten years old, but it has been continually updated.
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:4, Informative)
The fact that your particular place of work happens to have it figured out is no contradiction to the general case.
And you're talking local switching. In banking operations, you have remote hot standby in case your datacenter burns down or something else really bad happens (both COs you're connected to die at once, for instance).
With remote hot standby, switching and switching back is often (note the often) much more painful.
In case you still don't get it, note that switching implies that one of your datacenters is DOWN and you are now on a completely separate system with separate disk drives, communications links, etc. Switching back means that you have to bring everything back up, sync it, and fail back again.
Sure, it works. Is it fun? No. Is testing it and retesting it under every failure condition under a new OS port and processer architecture fun?
Um no.
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:2)
Our remote cluster is far enough away that it is safe but remains close enough to participate in the main clusters (about 40Km).
Our primary worry is RMS Journalling and the VMS Distributed lock manager, If these work, then failovers are a doddle.
Note that when the company went to Alpha from VAX, Digital were extremely generous with testing facilities. The application supports two processor architectures with two executable directories left over from the VAX migration. As long as the lock manager performs well our app will quite happily fail over.
Definitely - banks are very conservative (Score:2)
Even if you port and test everything, they're going to wait until there's a substantial track record of working reliably simply because no ever wants to find an obscure condition which incorrectly bills a million people - even a minor rounding error can be significant with billions of dollars floating around. They're going to do anything necessary to avoid having to prove the fault-tolerance system any of the thousands of transactions in a momentary outage from being dropped or (worse) misprocessed.
The other factor is constraints - there are a surprising number of contracts, regulations, industry rules, etc. which spell out the exact environment something is going to run on. Getting changes approved can take absurd amounts of time. The change management process on this kind of large system will seem completely unreal.
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:3, Interesting)
Easy, lets count on how much time and money both intel and HP invested in Itanium? 10 years and 5 billion dollars!
Their VP's and stockbrokers demand a return on their investment and will get it one way or another. In the bussiness world their is no such thing as a "bad investment" sadly enough. They are very brutal to failure and will do everything to save face. Both CEO's of Intel and HP would be canned if they decided to not continue the itanium. Even though this might be the best approach in the long run.
The itanium is a bloated overclocked piece of crap. Its an engineering disaster and the only reason it performs mediocrely well is because it is majorly overclocked with a one pound heat sink and a 500 watt fan that would blow away any case less then 50 pounds. Its true. Its a monster and nearly impossible to program for in assembly. This also makes it perform not to well under Linux since gcc is not very optimized for it.
I agree that the alpha is a better chip and yes the EV7 is actually obsolete( intel canned the ev8). May it rest in peace. Stupid bussinessmen gota love em.
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:3, Interesting)
marvel was already in the works before the HpaQ merger, and it would really make little sense to take a chip all the way to fab w/o at least running SOME of them to try and recoup some cost.
Plus it will probably give Intel a good idea of which components of Marvel to rape for the next gen of the (t)Itanic.
addendum: Dec/Compaq admins/users were also promised at least one more alpha for binary-compatible upgrades as a means to stretch past/current investment in systems while they figure out their next step (i.e. "oh peachy, alpha is dead.. what the fsck do we do now?") Had HPaQ reversed that decision I would bet the suddenly-abandoned Alpha users would cross HP systems of their list of potential replacement (myself, I was looking to switch to p-series IBM boxen).
I was a very short-lived DecpaQ Tru64 admin, but have to admit I fell in lust for the OS and architechure. Our alphas ran superb for their age and the obscene obese demands our Oracle DBA inflicted upon them. Nary a whimper. I still think it's mildly criminal Compaq threw away the horsepower farm simply because they were too stupid to market the things properly.
Re:HPs Strategy (Score:2)
All of the spec numbers are related to the EV68, not the new EV7. Its an apples/oranges comparison for performance.
"Itanium...has 30% fewer branches than Alpha" is also comparing apples to oranges because the branches are hidden with predicates.
Any time that HP/Intel claim a big win because of "compiler technology", their missing the point: most of these advances can be applied to any architecture.
There's nothing superior architecture-wise about Itanium. If anything, its a step backwards because a compiler cannot know the path software will take in advance. Period. Systems which adapt to the data stream at run time will have better performance overall no matter how much "compiler technology" advances.
How many FPS under Quake 3 though? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How many FPS under Quake 3 though? (Score:1)
It's hellaciously fast (Score:5, Informative)
SPECOMP2001 results, base/peak:
4 cpu:
EV7/1150: 6027/6824
I2/1000: 3762/4091
8 cpu:
EV7/1150: 10349/11929
POWER4+/1450: 9458/ 9694
PA8700+/875: 4375/ 4541
16 cpu:
EV7/1150: 17724/20637
PA8700+/875: 7763/ 8788
R14k/600: 7265/ 7726
Note that this is not a pure CPU test (like SpecINT/FP), but rather a test of SMP performance. Looks like the tin-foil hat "Wait 'til EV8!" brigade might have been on to something
'jfb
SpecOMP (link) (Score:4, Informative)
Q3: What components does SPEC OMP measure?
A3: Since the benchmarks are designed to reflect applications requiring compute-intensive parallel processing, they measure performance of the computer's processors, memory architecture, operating system, and compiler. It is important to remember the contribution of the latter three components.
'jfb
Re:It's hellaciously fast (Score:2)
I, like many other computer engineers, worship the ground that alpha designers stood on. To imagine that they for a bit of a laugh as an aside project created the StrongARM seems silly.
Re:It's hellaciously fast (Score:1)
As Rob Young pointed out in his post [realworldtech.com]:
"Not sure what you cobbled together but threads are your CPU counts. All the EV7 results are for 16 CPUs"-RY
Tester Name System Name CPUs Threads Base Peak
Compaq Computer Corp AlphaServer GS320 Model 32 64/731 16 16 5073 --
Hewlett-Packard Comp AlphaServer GS1280 Model M16 16 4 6027 6824
Hewlett-Packard Comp AlphaServer GS1280 Model M16 16 8 10349 11929
Hewlett-Packard Comp AlphaServer GS1280 Model M16 16 16 17420 20066
Hewlett-Packard Comp AlphaServer GS1280 Model M16 16 4 5482 6324
Hewlett-Packard Comp AlphaServer GS1280 Model M16 16 8 10040 11547
Hewlett-Packard Comp AlphaServer GS1280 Model M16 16 16 17724 20637
Info from here [specbench.org].
Re:It's hellaciously fast (Score:2)
The machine was configured such that thread count equalled active CPU count.
'jfb
Re:It's hellaciously fast (Score:1)
Re:It's hellaciously fast (Score:2)
'jfb
Alphas are great, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Alphas are great, but... (Score:3, Funny)
Not to worry (Score:2, Informative)
They are calling it their Customer Assurance Initiative [hp.com]
Re:Alphas are great, but... (Score:2)
The time you get problems is when you start depending on OS-specific services too heavily. Designing your program with portability in mind from the start doesn't add that much effort to the process and makes your life dramatically easier later because you can be platform agnostic, and just use whatever suits a particular job that day.
Some apps are too complicated (Score:2)
Odd reporting... (Score:4, Insightful)
Later, it finds performance specs and posts them? (Without listing a source for those numbers...)
Odd journalism to me... Sure, the Alpha sounds pretty good... But I'll be lame and wait for the official numbers...
Re:Odd reporting... (Score:1)
Ahh the memories (Score:3, Interesting)
HP will probably make sure that these boards and chips are not accessible to the non-commercial Alhpa lovers. So I will have to wait 10 years to get a cheap one off of Ebay.
Yes they do run Linux, VMS, Tru64 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yes they do run Linux, VMS, Tru64 (Score:5, Funny)
What, Oscar Wilde was a beta tester?
Re:Yes they do run Linux, VMS, Tru64 (Score:1)
Slashdot Uncertainties (Score:2, Funny)
Re:RDRAM (Score:2)
Re:RDRAM (Score:2)
From the HP site... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:From the HP site... (Score:1)
Re:From the HP site... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:From the HP site... (Score:5, Insightful)
And for the schmuck who said "Real operating systems supports Beowolf"...
a) It's Beowulf, not "beowolf". Check your literary history.
b) Bullpoop. Beowulf's got nothing to do with the OS, and everything to do with the applications. You show me an Oracle that uses MPI or PVM.
Of course! There's no need. Oracle already has OPS (Oracle parallel server). So yes, you can have an "8x8" cluster of Oracle nodes. Ever try to manage one of those? It's definitely a cluster ---- a cluster*uck!
SMP is a beautiful thing. It's not exactly linearly scalable, but close. And the beautiful part is that if your app is multithreaded, it'll automagically take advantage of the SMP capabilities of the system -- no need to code to the MPI or PVM API's.
Just for sheer "damn, that's cool" factor, think about this:
A Solaris 8 CD will boot and install on a single-proc, 33mhz SPARCstation 10 from 1992 all the way through a 108-processor, 900mhz/each Sun Fire 15000.
Now _THAT_'s scalable.
--NBVB
Re:From the HP site... (Score:1, Interesting)
"foremost for Windows" ? When most benchmarks for Itanium2 systems are posted using HP-UX or Linux ?
HP is pushing IPF systems as the systems you want if you want flexibility in running Windows, Linux or high-end Unix (read: not Linux 2.4 or 2.4++).
Re:From the HP site... (Score:1, Informative)
HP will introduce Superdome systems running Madison processors (Itanium2 shrink) this year (most likely scaling to 64way). Someone from HP also mentionned that they plan to put 2 Madison processors on a board, so we may see 128 way systems (with reduced bandwidth/proc) before Intel comes out with two-cores processors. Until then HP only sells up to 4 way systems. HP used to resell NEC's Azusa system (up to 16 Itanium (not Itanium2)), however it made no sense to buy one.
an implication that they are planning on keeping the Alpha platform long-term
You are reading too much in that sentence. Alpha systems are being phased out. For HP, the future of the high-end is Itanium only (phasing out Alpha and PA-RISC in the next 5 years). IIRC there should be one more iteration of Alpha processors (EV79?), then nothing new, just support.
Re:From the HP site... (Score:2)
Re:From the HP site... (Score:1, Informative)
I have some co-workers who were in Palo Alto and say they saw a running system alomost two years ago at HP HQ.
HP's roadmap for ageas has been that Itanium based SuperDomes are on the way real soon. The supposed release for a 64-way Itanium 2 last I heard was Q102...so they have a couple of months to deliver or change the date again.
I wouldn't trust it (Score:5, Funny)
2-4 processor setups (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:2-4 processor setups (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not so sure about this anymore. I was very impressed recently when I saw the diagnostic output from a Sun workstation that had a failed component. The Sun workstation reported down to the chip where the system had failed (the information comes out of the serial port during POST). When time equals money, this sort of stuff is hard to beat.
x86 boxes usually require hair-pulling trial-and-error troubleshooting that makes one feel terrible about the time wasted. Conversely, with the Sun box, the admin basically said "oh, that's it" and called the vendor.
Re:2-4 processor setups (Score:1)
Re:2-4 processor setups (Score:1)
Re:2-4 processor setups (Score:1)
I just did, but you'll have to take my word for it.
Can anyone say "rhubarb Constantinople?"
Re:2-4 processor setups (Score:2)
Re:2-4 processor setups (Score:2)
Heck, people have been complaining about the noise on the MDD G4 systems since they came out!
Re:2-4 processor setups (Score:2)
Re:2-4 processor setups (Score:1)
I hope the Alpha lives (Score:3, Interesting)
It would be nice to see HP sell Alpha as standalone processors and with a chipset offering, like in x86, for AT and ATX mobos. Custom Made-in-Taiwan parts will augument the system to produce very high power to cost ratios, and might allow the Alphas survival against the Itanium, UltraSparc, PowerPC and others.
Has anyone seen the cheapest-ever duron+mobo combos from ECS where the processor is actually mounted without a holder, via solder onto the board to make the thing really cheap? I know I would buy an offering like that using Alpha. Sure I know stability and secure hardware are the main reasons people buy full servers in the first place, but not all applications demand stability and flexibility to match the power, and I havent seen offerings in this region outside of the Wintel arena.
Re:I hope the Alpha lives (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't see any reason to use anything other than Hammer in the low-end 64 bit market, unless you're trying to have your whole shop be binary compatible.
Re:I hope the Alpha lives (Score:2)
Well, I hope your idea happens, but I doubt it - especially the part about cost.
Re:I hope the Alpha lives (Score:4, Insightful)
Compaq were too scared of Intel to even remain in the high end market, where Intel are yet to make an impact. The competition is going to be fierce, it will be interesting to see if Sun and IBM can compete in the long term. Sun are already starting to look shaky, but at least they were willing to stay and fight. I think Intel will eventually push it's competitors out of the processor market, except maybe for a few niche products. The market is IMO a natural monopoly just waiting for one company to step up to the plate. The fact that Alpha is being killed just proves the point that superior technology counts for little.
Alpha is dead, this is the last hurah in what was a very significant era. Great technology developed by brilliant technicians and killed off by incompetent managers.
Re:I hope the Alpha lives (Score:1)
Since you can still get 800 MHz Durons for $24, don't bother with those combo boards even if they are using the better Morgan core.
Kris
Real Life Performance (Score:3, Insightful)
Just imagine how quickly MPlayer/Mencoder could encode video on these new alphas... The specFP tests show the new Alphas better than double the performance over Sun, IBM, and almost double increase over older Alphas.
You know... Something very new is going to need to come along before end users need more power than this for their home machines. Perhaps MPEG-5? Theora? Tarkin?
Re:Real Life Performance (Score:2)
Re:Real Life Performance (Score:1)
Re:Real Life Performance (Score:3, Informative)
In addition, I was just checking out Vorbis, and ``Tremor" (the int-only
Not that it matters, the video is what takes so much time to encode. It's that this simple fact blows your credibility to hell.
"...no Alpha benchmark until Itanium is faster..." (Score:2)
Re:Dupe! (Score:4, Funny)
Here's your chance to datamine the previous story for +5, insightful comments to karma whore here!
Re:Mispelled (Score:3, Informative)
Re:go to gaol (Score:1)
But I wouldn't argue it was wrong to use it... seems fine to me, no uglier than jail.
When you bypass load balancing in a URL (Score:1)
.:diatonic:.
Re:When you bypass load balancing in a URL (Score:2)
A good showcase would be to replace their loadbalanced server farm with a single alphaserver, remember altavista ran off alphaservers for years when it was the most popular search engine around.
Actually, can you really take seriously a company that doesnt even use their own products?
Re:When you bypass load balancing in a URL (Score:2)