Fine, but who is going to take it to the next level, i.e., motherboard, node, server, clustered servers...Dell? Compaq? IBM? HP? I don't think so.
Tony,
There is some appearance of a relationship with Compaq. K7 using the same bus as Alpha, being the biggest hint of such a relationship. Compaq is always experimenting with alternate CPUs, and are certainly capable of evaluating their quality and suitability for use.
As far as system software goes, the Alpha software base probably gives K7 a big headstart, again because they share the same bus (and motherboard.)
In fact, their history of protracted yield problems very recently, to me, hints of poor reliability.
I'm not sure how you correlate the problems associated with bringing up a new fab/process, to the reliability of the CPUs built in that fab. Unlike Intel, AMD has never had a major CPU bug blowup in their face.
Besides, The K7 is bound to be more reliable than the operating system running on it (NT.) Sorry- I couldn't resist throwing that in.
Scumbria |
