From EE Times.
--
July 02, 2001, Issue: 1173
Computer maker to adopt 64-bit Itanium, transfer Alpha design team to chip giant -- Compaq-Intel deal ends Alpha MPU's run
Will Wade
San Mateo, Calif. - Compaq Computer Corp. is moving away from producing its own line of high-end Alpha microprocessors. The move likely sounds the death knell for Alpha, once called the fastest processor in the industry.
Compaq has signed an agreement with Intel Corp. that involves transferring Compaq's entire Alpha design team to the microprocessor giant and adopting Intel's 64-bit Itanium processor line for Compaq workstations and servers. Compaq will also migrate its line of MIPS-based systems to Intel chips.
"This is a very bold move for us," said Rich Marcello, vice president and general manager for Compaq's performance systems group. He noted that the Alpha road map extended for several more years but that starting around 2004, when the chip would have competed head-to-head against Intel's Itanium, its performance advantage would begin to erode significantly.
"When we looked at our road map and overlaid it with Intel's road map, we found there was no substantial performance benefit," he said. "Basically, we are saying that we couldn't differentiate ourselves at the CPU level."
Compaq currently has some 500 microprocessor engineers and spends about $150 million annually to develop its internal processors. Effective immediately, 200 of those designers will go to work for Intel, where it is expected they will be able to use their Alpha expertise in future iterations of Intel's Itanium family. Eventually, the rest of Compaq's MPU designers will become Intel employees. Marcello said the company will be receiving some significant financial compensation from Intel, but he would give no details.
Until now, Compaq, Sun Microsystems Inc. and IBM Corp. were the only system vendors that designed their own processors in bids to compete against Intel. Marcello said that his company's decision was a reflection of the changing face of the processor world, where the CPU has become a commodity, and he predicted that the others would follow Compaq's lead. "More than 95 percent of the customers I've talked to said this is the right decision for us to make," he said. "Eventually, I believe that Sun and IBM will have to do this as well."
'What makes us Sun'
However, executives at Sun and IBM rejected this notion. Sue Kunz, director of marketing at Sun Microsystems (Palo Alto, Calif.), made it clear that Sun has no intention of exiting the processor arena, where its current flagship chip is the 64-bit Ultrasparc III. The Ultrasparc IV is in development, but will not launch this year. While both Sun and Compaq design powerful processors that become the heart of their respective high-end servers and workstations, Kunz pointed out an important difference.
"I believe that we have always done a much better job than Compaq," she said. "We have always built our own chips, software and systems. Building all the parts together is a key part of what makes us Sun."
Kunz praised the Alpha architecture, but said that its absence from the market could be an opportunity for Sun. "You can't just swap out a processor and have the systems run exactly the same. This will be felt by the customers," she said. "If I was an Alpha user, right now I'd be sitting down and trying to figure out my strategy going forward. And at Sun, we're going to be calling all of them. We've got feet out on the street right now."
IBM (Armonk, N.Y.) was equally committed to designing advanced processors for its own servers. "This is a good business for us," said Joel Tendler, program director for IBM's Power4, a 64-bit processor that is expected to be available in systems by the end of this year. "We are seeing increasing success in this marketplace, and we are gaining share," Tendler said.
Compaq expects to shift its entire line of 64-bit servers and workstations to the Intel architecture Itanium family by 2004. This will include both the Alpha-based systems and the MIPS-based Himalaya family of products. Until those first Itanium-based systems are available, it will support both technologies, and new versions of both are expected in the near future.
Compaq is currently working on the EV7 version of the Alpha chip, which is expected to debut in the company's Marvel line of systems in 2003. A subsequent version of that design will also be released, which will simply involve a process shrink. Marcello said these parts, and existing Alpha designs, will continue to be produced as long as there is demand from existing customers, which he said could continue through 2012. "These will be the last Alpha designs," he said.
The Alpha architecture was originally developed by the now-defunct Digital Equipment Corp. Though powerful, Alpha chips were also expensive, and their power dissipation levels were significant, said Tony Massimini, chief of technology for Semico Research Corp. (Phoenix). And while Digital was promoting the Alpha, Intel was pushing its X86 chips into the computing sector with increasing success. "Nobody counted on Intel doing so well at getting so much performance out of that architecture," said Massimini.
Digital was mistaken in assuming it would sell Alpha in the same volumes as Intel's X86 chips, Massimini said. It had invested a huge sum to build a world-class fabrication facility in Hudson, Mass., dedicated to Alpha production. But without adequate demand, the fab was hard to fill. "It became a huge white elephant for them," he said. Eventually, Digital's financial troubles led to a complicated sell-off agreement brokered in 1997 and 1998, where Intel acquired Digital's semiconductor operations for $700 million and Compaq snapped up the rest of the company for $9.6 billion. "The only reason the Alpha is still shipping is because Compaq kept it going," Massimini said. "It's always had a reputation for good technology, but there has just not been any good marketing behind it."
As part of the complicated terms of this deal, Samsung Semiconductor obtained manufacturing rights for the Alpha chips, and still serves as a foundry for Compaq's low-end Alpha products. IBM produces the more advanced Alpha parts. Separately, Compaq acquired its MIPS processor team when it purchased Tandem Computers in 1997. Both IBM and Samsung will continue to produce Alpha chips for Compaq, said Marcello.
Steve Leibson, editorial director of Microprocessor Report, said he was not surprised by Compaq's decision. "It was just a matter of time before Compaq abandoned Alpha," he said. "I call this deal 'Itanium eats Alpha.' " Compaq has been developing parallel 64-bit strategies around Alpha and MIPS processors, and they were hard to reconcile from a marketing point of view, Leibson said. While both offer solid performance, that is not always enough to support a product line.
Tough to go it alone
"When I look into the future, I see 20 or 30 other server and workstation vendors already jumping on the Itanium bandwagon. Sun, IBM and Compaq are the last holdouts, and the question is whether they want to be one of the three last holdouts," Leibson said. "It is very difficult to go it alone, and there is a limited amount that one company can do against the rest of the world."
However, Leibson said he does not expect Sun or IBM to follow suit, as both have managed to develop healthy businesses around their respective Ultrasparc and PowerPC architectures. "Compaq decided, correctly, that they are a system company and not a processor company," Leibson said. "There are a lot of good architectures that have fallen by the wayside; the industry can't support more than a few main architectures. This is pretty much the death knell for the Alpha."
---
Alpha and Omega
- March 1992: Digital tips plans for Alpha processor
- April 1993: Digital's Alpha road map passes 300 MHz
- Jan. 1998: Compaq buys Digital for $9.6 billion
- June 2001: Compaq throws backing to Itanium, giving Alpha to Intel |
