Interesting post from CPQ thread. Also, anecdotal evidence shows that many other threads are now discussing RMBS technology- more so than even 2-3 weeks ago, I wonder why <gg>
MileHigh
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To: +Night Writer (35112 )
From: +Chris Monday, Oct 19 1998 7:46PM ET
Reply # of 35115
Not only has digital brought the Alpha to CPQ sales, but Alpha technology has apparently developed a 200 mzh bus which is being utilized by AMD in their new K-7 to overtake INTC Merced by running their CPUs above 500 mhz.
I will post the part most relevent to CPQ:
AMD Moves onto the Overtaking Lane
Created: October 15, 1998
By Thomas Pabst
Why AMD's K7 will be Intel's toughest competitor ever
1.The CPU Bus
As already pretty well known, K7 and thus Slot A is not
using Intel's P6 GTL+ bus protocol, but Digital's (aka CPQ) Alpha bus protocol ‘EV6'. EV6 has got a lot of architectural
advantages over GTL+ already, like e.g. the ‘point-to-point
topology' for multi-processing, but in case of the K7 it's
even running at 200 MHz. This means that it looks as if K7
will be the first CPU that can really take advantage of the
high bandwidth memory types like direct RDRAM and DDR
SDRAM. Intel's GTL+ running at 100 MHz has a peak
bandwidth of only 800 MB/s, at 133 MHz it will have only
1066 MB/s, so that you wonder why Intel's next chipset for
Katmai will have direct RDRAM support. Direct RDRAM as
well as DDR SDRAM running at 100 MHz offers a peak
bandwidth of 1.6 GB/s and this bandwidth is only met by
K7's 200 MHz EV6 bus. I guess that AMD will have to thank
Intel for pushing direct RDRAM, because K7 seems to be the
first CPU that will really need it.
Once again in short: K7's EV6 offers excellent multi
processor support, the highest bus bandwidth and is over
all superior to GTL+.
If you want to read the rest of the article, you can find it here:
tomshardware.com
Anyone have any thoughts on where this might take CPQ, especially in retail PCs?
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