James - Concerning the Alpha Chip
DEC has marketed the ALPHA chip (very high end versions) for over three years, and Windows NT has been available for the ALPHA chip continuously for all this time.
Gates is pushing NT - I wish he'd push it faster.
DEC's new Alpha chip, the 21164, relies upon lower cost manufacturers - Samsung and Mitsubishi. DEC hasn't been able to be competitive, cost-wise, with Intel on earlier incarnations of the Alpha chip.
No question about it - Alpha chips are faster than Intel's chips - today.
Will Intel be brought to its knees by this chip? Neither you nor I know that answer today.
However, do you know how many competitors Intel has survived (I don't want to use the word defeated) in the past 15 years?
Motorola - 68000 and 88000 RISC
Zilog - Z8000, Z800, Z80
IBM/Motorola/Apple - PowerPC
Texas Instruments - 9900, Various x86 processors (Cyrix Designs)
ULSI - x86 Clone
Chips & Technology - x86 Clone
IIT - x86 Clone
National Semiconductor - 32016, 32032
RISC, Incorporated - SGI, MIPS, Sparc, IBM's Original RIOS
Sun - SPARC & Sparc International (Plus Fujitsu/Ross Technology)
HP - HP's PA-RISC
NEC - V series x86 compatibles, MIPS 4400 variants
NCUBE - Massively parallel processors (MPP)
Thinking Machines, Inc. - MPP
Symbolics - AI Symbolic Processors
AMD - 386/486 & K5
Cyrix - 386/486 & 6x86
Japan, Inc TRON Project
DEC - ALpha (1992 - 1996 variants)
ARM - ARM 3,4,5, 6 & 7 (Plus Thumb & StrongARM) - DEC & VLSI
Now, these are SOME of the competitors Intel has been up against over the past 15 years. And Intel, SINGLE-HANDEDLY, has triumphed over all of them. I repeat - ALL of THEM. Single Handedly.
So, don't think that Intel hasn't been Battle Tested!.
Concerning your comment - "as a work station you would have to have
a twin pentimum to keep up."
Gee - better call up IBM & Compaq. They are selling dual Pentiums in their workstation machines. I'm sure they will be glad to hear they can rip these out and stuff in one Alpha.
Now - consider this. DEC sells computers, and they are trying to sell CPU chips to Intel's customers which are, themselves, DEC's competitors. If DEC was your competitor, would you buy DEC's CPUs to compete against DEC? H*ll no - I'm sure you're not that naiive.
Bet your farm on DEC & Alpha. I'm betting on Intel.
See ya in the Winner's Circle!
Monica |
