Ali, are you seriously saying that Alpha will win over the x86 architecture? If Alpha has such architectural advantages how come even DEC has recognized that the Pentium Pro and Pentium II match it in integer operations? How come its market share is declining?
According to the latest issue of Business Week (6/9/97 issue, page 38) Alpha sales are expected to show a decline in June. ("Sales of the company's Alpha computers will probably be down for the quarter ending June 30, even as the rest of the industry is booming.")
Are businesses around the world going to buy millions of expensive Alpha machines for their secretaries to run word processing programs, spreadsheets, and browsers? This week I was astonished to see that the Legal Department in my company has bought Pentium Pros for everyone, including the secretaries (they are now called "assistants", which is more politically correct). Two years ago these guys had XTs and monochrome monitors! I was told that in another non-technical area everybody got dual Pentium Pros! (I have not verified this claim, which is admittedly hard to believe) I wonder if people should also buy Ferraris to drive to the supermarket.
Alpha's advantage is in floating point calculations, and even in that area, it is a 2/1 advantage, not a 10/1, so one can get similar performance with multiple CPUs. The bottleneck nowadays is bandwith, not CPU speed, so there is no reason for the Alpha revert its slow decline in market share. If anything, the trend will accelerate, as more companies will use multiple Pentium Pros and Pentium IIs in servers.
And don't forget: the Merced is coming.
Unfortunately, I am not an Intel shareholder, but if I were I would not need your condolences. Business Week also showed a chart with DEC stock price and the S&P, since June 92. The S&P almost doubled in this period, and Intel did much better than that. DEC's stock price is down 14% since the day Palmer became CEO in 1992.
RIP Alpha, RIP DEC, RIP DEC's stockholders wealth. Accept my condolences. |
