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Technology Stocks : Compaq -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FR1 who wrote (31417)	8/21/1998 9:17:00 PM
From: Senator949	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 97611

If MS really has the gonads to wait for McKinley, the follow-on to Merced (it was stated here recently that Merced will probably never be more than a test-bed system) for a real enterprise OS (64 bit)then they may find that they've lost out to UNIX. By then they may even find that they've lost the desktop to LINUX if someone writes a GUI that is similar to Win95/8. Robin

To: FR1 who wrote (31417)	8/22/1998 2:25:00 AM
From: Acid	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 97611

It seems like you are viewing Merced as processor which will be used by the masses. I don't think many individuals will be using machines based on Merced. You will have high-end enterprise servers using the chip. You will also have some very high-end workstations using Merced. But I doubt many people who are currently using Windows 98 will be running Merced. Merced is going to be a niche market processor for a long time. IA64 is not going to replace IA32 for quite some time. It is very expensive and runs x86 compatible code slower than current the IA32 processors. If 64-bit NT is delayed, that would hurt Compaq's chances of pushing Alpha. I still question whether people would adopt Alpha when they know Intel will be pushing an alternative even if they have to wait an extra year or so.

To: FR1 who wrote (31417)	8/22/1998 9:13:00 PM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 97611

Franz - Your comments are exactly right for client systems. Corporate users are switching to NT in small numbers because of some advantages for security and management, but most everyone is sticking to Win9X. But the Alpha NT market is almost entirely servers. Alpha is a high end machine whose main benefits are on systems with more than 4GB of physical memory (Alpha currently supports 32GB and can address terrabytes). These would be large database systems, internet servers, exchange servers - large corporate systems. I would be amazed if CPQ brought out alpha clients in anything but high-end engineering workstations. CPQ currently has OpenVMS, a 64 bit OS for the DEC legacy users, and DEC Unix, a 64 bit OS for the general high end Unix base which includes most of the corporate world these days. With CPQ's distribution and muscle, DEC Unix could help penetrate SUN's Solaris market, since it has a number of significant advantages over Solaris technically, and also has a large base of applications. This is one of the reasons that Intel is intent on getting Sun to port Solaris to Merced. CPQ also intends to port DEC Unix to Merced, so there will not be as tight linkage between DEC Unix and Alpha going forward. If the press is right, and NT5 is really a 2000 deliverable, then 64 bit NT will be later than that. But as I understand it, the 64 bit development is separate from the 32 bit NT5 development, although much of the OS code is common. The delays in standard NT5 may not have a day for day impact on the delivery of 64 bit NT. In any event, 64 bit NT is not something that will directly affect CPQ sales any time soon. Sales of Alphas using 32 bit NT (which has some large memory extensions specifically for Alpha) and the other 2 DEC OS choices amounted to a little over $3B in 97, according to Digital. Not huge but not bad either. CPQ probably needs to at leasdt double that volume to make the processor a paying proposition. I think that after selling the fab to Intel, the economics of Alpha are a lot better. I believe CPQ will push Alpha as a vehicle for technology leadership and to establish itself as the 64 bit leader, a clear differentiator from Dell which will not be able to have similar offerings until late 2000, if then.