"To the outside observer, improvements in PC architecture are evolutionary but logical. Processors advance inevitably in speed and performance, in happy accordance with Moore's Law. For Nebojsa Novakovic, a consultant in high-end computing systems, that's hardly the case. The demise of the DEC Alpha processor is a case in point. A performance leader was killed off by corporate whim."
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Member since:2005-07-06
No innovation? Now we've got x86 which are now as powerful as the Alpha were at a fraction of the price, that's an innovation.
I'm not sure that Alpha is opened, SPARC is, Alpha I don't think so.
> I cannot understand why nobody cares to make a new version
Well you've stated the reason yourself above: capitalism! Sure the Alpha ISA is beautiful but if you've made a new version of the Alpha, you'll sell so few of them that the performance/price ratio wouldn't be good..
Besides it would also compete with IBM's POWER which has much more momentum..
Why would Chinese or anyone would make desktop with Alphas or MIPS??
If you look at the history it's pretty clear that x86-64 will rule the desktop and probably also the server in the future, likely forever, probably with some modification though (for multicore or perhaps more radically for coprocessors like in the Cell).
Member since:
2006-01-22
I am very sad to see that these two architectures are almost dead. SGI and HP have the whole responsibility. It is a same that x86/power is the only winners-players. Capitalism is so DULL, no innovation. Hopefully BLX is gonna have some cool MIPS-like chips. I can't wait. And Alpha is open, I cannot understand why nobody cares to make a new version. The power of Linux/BSD is that you have a standard base of apps that can be ported to both platforms. HyperTransport is an improved SysAD bus. I have a question to all in the thread since I am not an expert. If someone uses UBOOT or LinuxBIOS can the H/Transport on nforce chipsets be used with PMCSierra's Hypertransport MIPS64 ??? Is it so difficult to adapt it? I cannot come to a conclusion. What is your opinion? Hopefully Chinese make also desktop Alphas and MIPS64. European and American market are so old and lazy. By the way I feel very good that people like BBRV try to pinpoint the necessity of alternatives. Even ARM is under crisis to the desktop.