Hewlett-Packard plans to begin selling today the last and most powerful model in the AlphaServer line, a series of servers that stretches back to a very different era in the computing industry. HP plans to announce improvements to Tru64 and OpenVMS today as well.
New HP AlphaServer the Omega of the Line
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about the demise of the Alpha chip. At one time, the Alpha was lightyears ahead of anything out there. Pretty much all of the owners of Alpha squandered it or let it just mire in mediocrity when it could have THE chip on the market. Sure, R&D for chips is enormously expensive but if DEC, Compaq and/or HP had played their cards right, we would be basking in the glory of the Alpha’s greatness. Too bad. I used Tru 64 on an Alpha machine for a while and it was sweet.
It is my understanding that Intel nows owns all the IP associated with the Alpha. Somebody please correct me on this one if I am wrong. Let’s hope that Intel will use the Alpha knowledge for good and not waste the technology. Surely they could at least prop up the Itanic and its various disastrous incarnations.
So long and farewell to the Alpha as we know it.
to destroy a successful technology because they have too much invested in a failed one.
I still have a AlphaPC 164LX at home. It runs OpenBSD and it’s a really sweet box. It’s a 600mhz and it runs almost as fast as my athlon tbird 1.4ghz. It is a sad day for the IT/Computing world. They should get rid of all those slow x86 cpus and invest in good hardware.
the Alpha should have changed the face of personal computing and put the horror that is the x86 in its rightful place – at the bottom of the heap.
It’s really sad that DEC got swallowed up – they seem to have been one of the finest collection of engineers ever assembled in the computing world but I guess their management wasn’t up to snuff.
and yes, Bascule is right: leave it to HP to destroy a promising CPU technology. HP is even burying it’s excellent PARISC architecture, because an unfortunate and ill-vested infatuation with Itanic.
However, Itanic seems to be set to sink bigtime. Too expensive and not enough software. And did I mention it’s not backwards compatible? Even an Alpha running a x86 emulator will beat the Itanic’s x86 performance.
When I was learning about the Alpha architecture I was genuinely impressed. It seems incredible that it had such a bad fate. Hopefully, maybe, Itanic’s demise will resurrect it.
Introduction to Alpha. Some hardware knowledge required to understand this.
http://www.alphalinux.org/docs/alpha-howto.html
Also in other formats available.
http://linux.maruhn.com/sec/alpha-howto.html
this happened in the end. While I’m usually not a MS basher (I don’t think they usually do any worse, certainly not any better than the majority of sotfware companies), the fate of Alpha is IMO a real reflection of how powerful they really are. The original Alphastations were supported by WinNT 4, and the refusal of MS to port Win2K to Alpha more or less sealed the Alpha’s fate. The hardware was too expensive for the other *nixes and without MS support for the NT kernel there usually was not sufficient ROI for the platform. And I REALLY hate that. MS moved the whole market IMO, and we are all poorer for it in this case.
I had an AlphaStation 400, an orphan at my previous job. They *even* let me take it with me when I left! I spent about $100 and upgraded the memory to 128Meg, and I mean it FLEW! I ran RedHat 6.2 stripped down, I built custom kernels (I think) right up to 2.4.10. It was a wonderful beast! The power supply finally died and I gave up with it, but to this day it was my favorite machine.
RIP Alpha. It may be decades before we see another like ‘ya.
d
Hello,
Actually, NT 3.1 supported MIPS ALPHA etc. And there were several clone alpha builders out there, I know, I bought one off of ebay to run FreeBSD however, FreeBSD did not support the clone bios. But your right about microsoft though.
Such AWESOME boxes Digital made, the Alpha was truely ahead of it’s time. Then Compaq bought them and started ignoring their new found gem, and now HP just plain wont sell you one unless you can give them a damn good argument as to why you cant use the Itanium (or so I’ve heard).
My main workstation at the moment is a Digital Personal Workstation 500au, 500Mhz 21164 Alpha processor with 512MB of RAM, and a few nice scsi drives. It makes a _damn_ fine workstation.
As for MS being to blame for the Alpha never really taking off, I agree, but only to a certain point. It surely had something to do with it. But I’d place blame on Compaq and HP for totally dropping the ball with it. They let a technology die instead of investing a bit of money in it, and took the “safer” bet with Itanium. Wouldn’t mind playing poker with those guys
IIRC Windows 2000 did exist on Alpha up until Win2K-RC1. Then suddenly MS dropped it?
I too am sorry to hear Alpha being readied for the grave, one of the true greats in the industry. RIP.
Some of the comments say that MS killed the Alpha. DEC, Compaq or HP could have bought a Windows source license and have done the job of porting themselves. But maybe they feared ending up struggling as AMD is now. Why AMD by now does not have more market share than they have is beyond me. If Solaris should fizzle out as OpenVMS did then Sparc should meet the same fate as the Alpha. The same goes for OSX and the PPC. Maybe Linux can provide the nutrients that these otherwise dying species need.
The same goes for OSX and the PPC.
***********************************
<nitpicky>
ooooooooooooooo, i so would not say that… IBM is the driving force behind PPC, not apple…. for personal computers, sure, apple drives the ppc; however, IBM drives the power architecture, which ppc is a derivitive of, and they use it to sell their high to mid-range systems… even **if** apple drops ppc support for os x, trust me, it would survive b/c of IBM…
furthermore, IBM uses the ppc architecture for some of their workstations and embedded resources…
</nitpicky>
now, to get more on topic, the news of the death of the alpha just makes me wanna cry as a tech enthusiast
…
still, many of digital’s advances are *starting* to find their way to amd & intel processor (hyperthreading & hypertransport are examples)…
i only hope that we may one day again achieve the full efficiency/greatness that the alpha achieved so early on…
“in memorium alpha”… rip alpha…
Well, actually MS did not drop the Alpha chip. Compaq decided they did not want to invest the time and effort in developing/testingt Windows 2000 for the Alpha. MS has to have support from the HW manufacturer to effective develop and support a CPU. It is the exact same reason MIPS and PPC support ended for NT.
and yes, Bascule is right: leave it to HP to destroy a promising CPU technology. HP is even burying it’s excellent PARISC architecture, because an unfortunate and ill-vested infatuation with Itanic.</i
The funny part is that SUN actually praised PA-RISC as a great architecture, however, if I was SUN, I would be rubbing my hands with glee knowing that a company has thrown out a good technology for something inferior.
[i]However, Itanic seems to be set to sink bigtime. Too expensive and not enough software. And did I mention it’s not backwards compatible? Even an Alpha running a x86 emulator will beat the Itanic’s x86 performance.
Itanium wouldn’t be so bad if Intel actually saw relity and PAID for software to be ported to Itanium, ALSO they needed to make Itanium and openstandard just like x86-64 is. As an end user/customer, do I really want to buy a piece of technology controlled by one company or would I buy a technology which is based around openstandards such as x86-64 and SPARC.
Also, with Itanium, why can’t I purchase one of their low end processors and motherboards from Intel? I was contacted by an Intel person saying, “you can lease one”. My reply, “no sale. Unless you are willing to sell me a motherboard and processor, I’ll move by businesses else where”. The Intel rep tried to convince me that leasing would be a *GREAT* idea, and I simply replied that I don’t want to be in a position where Intel has me by the short ‘n curlies.
The reason why I don’t give Itanium a chance is the mear fact that over 50% of the computers sold are not from large vendors but from your local shop. Since these local shops can’t get Itanium processors or motherboards, what is the net result? no one can access it, hence, no one can purchase it.
and yes, Bascule is right: leave it to HP to destroy a promising CPU technology. HP is even burying it’s excellent PARISC architecture, because an unfortunate and ill-vested infatuation with Itanic.
The funny part is that SUN actually praised PA-RISC as a great architecture, however, if I was SUN, I would be rubbing my hands with glee knowing that a company has thrown out a good technology for something inferior.
However, Itanic seems to be set to sink bigtime. Too expensive and not enough software. And did I mention it’s not backwards compatible? Even an Alpha running a x86 emulator will beat the Itanic’s x86 performance.
Itanium wouldn’t be so bad if Intel actually saw relity and PAID for software to be ported to Itanium, ALSO they needed to make Itanium and openstandard just like x86-64 is. As an end user/customer, do I really want to buy a piece of technology controlled by one company or would I buy a technology which is based around openstandards such as x86-64 and SPARC.
Also, with Itanium, why can’t I purchase one of their low end processors and motherboards from Intel? I was contacted by an Intel person saying, “you can lease one”. My reply, “no sale. Unless you are willing to sell me a motherboard and processor, I’ll move by businesses else where”. The Intel rep tried to convince me that leasing would be a *GREAT* idea, and I simply replied that I don’t want to be in a position where Intel has me by the short ‘n curlies.
The reason why I don’t give Itanium a chance is the mear fact that over 50% of the computers sold are not from large vendors but from your local shop. Since these local shops can’t get Itanium processors or motherboards, what is the net result? no one can access it, hence, no one can purchase it.
ps. For the love of Pete, implement a registration and edit feature for morons such as muchself who make stupid mistakes.
It might be easy to blame others for any failure but to me ALPHA team themselves failed to do their works. In our office, we got 2 nos of ALPHA server which run very well, without failure since the last 2 years whereas even our Intel processor HP server did failed.
However, long ago I got experience when I tried to get their support, they “forgot” to reply all of my messages until now. I also contact them to get information on how to buy ALPHA server and the situation still the same —- no reply until now (I knew, ALPHA Processor Inc/Digital deceased already). This shows how bad their support and marketing was. Compared to MS, they even treat me as personal user (in occasion where I bought their product and gave complaint) a lot better than any other corporation that I’ve contacted as a business user.
To me it is the marketing effort that lead to success/failure of any products. MS product migt be inferior to some other products but their marketing strategy is good whereas ALPHA Processor might be light years ahead of others but their marketing effort is the worst. Can you imagine many IT personnel here just gave a blink when mentioned about ALPHA.
“The funny part is that SUN actually praised PA-RISC as a great architecture,”
Obviously trolls are not even trying hard these days. Clearly you have no freaking idea about the rivarly between SUN and HP when it comes to the workstation/server segment. SUN would get caught dead rather than saying mum even remotelly good about PA-RISC.
“Itanium and openstandard just like x86-64 is”
Itanium is an open standard of sorts, as it is a colaboration between Intel AND HP, if by open you mean you can access the ISA and architecture details, then yeah. Which is the same as X86-64. Go ahead make an X86-64 w/o letting AMD know and pay their licensing fees, and feel how “open” x86-64 is! SPARC is the only open standard out there, as it is indeed an IEEE standard.
“The reason why I don’t give Itanium a chance is the mear fact that over 50% of the computers sold are not from large vendors but from your local shop.”
Again pulling numbers out of your rear end, I guess most lan partiers with their tricked out neon transparent FeeCees believe they are the bulk of the market. LOL… yeah 50% suuuure…. LOL, I am sure your home alone represents 40% of the total computer market according to your uninformed bollocks.
PS> You indeed can purchase as many itaniums as you wish from intel, I am pretty sure they will be happy to sell them to you, afterall they need the sales badly. LOL, lease a computer to you? Idiots….
I have an install CD of Win2k beta, believe it or not.
“The funny part is that SUN actually praised PA-RISC as a great architecture,”
Obviously trolls are not even trying hard these days. Clearly you have no freaking idea about the rivarly between SUN and HP when it comes to the workstation/server segment. SUN would get caught dead rather than saying mum even remotelly good about PA-RISC.
No, it’s true, a Sun executive did praise PARISC once. I think it was McNealy.
HP would probably never sell it because they realise the competition they would be facing if they do.
About this last Alpha based system, just how powerful is it compared to other CPU in its class, and what does it excel at?
“No, it’s true, a Sun executive did praise PARISC once. I think it was McNealy.”
HAHAHA HAHHAHAHAH WHWHAHAHAHAHAH HAHAHAHAH…. LOL Thanks I needed the laugh.
Wait was that before he praised Microsoft’s business practices, or after he said how much he dig Windows NT?
“HP would probably never sell it because they realise the competition they would be facing if they do. ”
Also because the technology is being carried over the Itanium. Plus a lot of the Alpha IP is actually own by Intel.
How the mighty have fallen, Digital products were fairly good from my experience. my firts unix expierence was on a Alpha server running Digital UNIX.
They use to have a big hardware plant here in Galway (Ireland — my hometown) back in 1991 (i think) they shutdown production and moved it to scotland. At the time Galway was the prefered location to keep the plant, but the British Goverment reminded Digital of it’s many contracts that it had with it. Result plant was moved to scotland. Still they kept software here and eventually got back up over the 1,000 employed, it’s now HP you should see the names of the races sponsered by HP at the “Galway Races” (horse racing festival)
*rolls eyes*
I hear the best way to play around with that is to set the system clock to the year 2010 before installation that way the beta will last for about 7years (as oppose to 180 days)
remember coming across that on a Alpha Windows site
HAHAHA HAHHAHAHAH WHWHAHAHAHAHAH HAHAHAHAH…. LOL Thanks I needed the laugh.
Wait was that before he praised Microsoft’s business practices, or after he said how much he dig Windows NT?
Can you stop being an asshole and actually come up with one single meaningful fact?
Also because the technology is being carried over the Itanium.
Wrong (again): Alpha arch is not carried over to Itanic, it’s PARISC that is, and it’s the PARISC team taht developed most of Itanic.
aye mario the McKinley and Madison are mostly designed by HP after the farce that Intel did with Merced. However the next generation Tanglewood is been designed by Intel. From what i’ve read it’s the former Alpha Crew doing all the work. Result is a multi-core SMT enabled Chip (they are saying up to 8 cores) don’t expect it anytime soon though 😉
I should say it’s the 2nd chip coming. The next one is a dual core consiting of 2 madison cores.
Tanglewood is alot more elegant design, borrowing heavily from the cancelled EV8 (which intel now owns the plans and IP to)
“The funny part is that SUN actually praised PA-RISC as a great architecture,”
Obviously trolls are not even trying hard these days. Clearly you have no freaking idea about the rivarly between SUN and HP when it comes to the workstation/server segment. SUN would get caught dead rather than saying mum even remotelly good about PA-RISC.
http://news.com.com/2100-1006-986048.html
“McNealy also disparaged Hewlett-Packard for deciding to move away from its own PA-RISC processors.
“PA is a pretty interesting architecture, and we’re glad they put a fork in it,” McNealy said. ”
Interesting as in, “thank goodness they took off that superior processor off the market. Now they’re putting all their money on a processor based on some defunct 1970s super computer concept that has yet to work in the real world”.
HP has handed their UNIX customers on a platter to SUN, and believe me, SUN is very happy about it.
“Itanium and openstandard just like x86-64 is”
Itanium is an open standard of sorts, as it is a colaboration between Intel AND HP, if by open you mean you can access the ISA and architecture details, then yeah. Which is the same as X86-64. Go ahead make an X86-64 w/o letting AMD know and pay their licensing fees, and feel how “open” x86-64 is! SPARC is the only open standard out there, as it is indeed an IEEE standard.
x86-64 is under the mutual agreement between AMD and Intel that was hammered out a few years ago when Intel was bought before the FTA. The same ones that demanded that Microsoft had to make concessions to their Passport authetication service.
“The reason why I don’t give Itanium a chance is the mear fact that over 50% of the computers sold are not from large vendors but from your local shop.”
Again pulling numbers out of your rear end, I guess most lan partiers with their tricked out neon transparent FeeCees believe they are the bulk of the market. LOL… yeah 50% suuuure…. LOL, I am sure your home alone represents 40% of the total computer market according to your uninformed bollocks.
obviously you know jack squat about the market. Dell sells 24million, HP sells 23million and IBM around 2.4million, so if the total shipments per year is 100million, where is the other 47million coming form? the land of nod?
PS> You indeed can purchase as many itaniums as you wish from intel, I am pretty sure they will be happy to sell them to you, afterall they need the sales badly. LOL, lease a computer to you? Idiots….
Sure, and pay AUS$7000 for an Itanium computer that performs worse than a AUS$4000 Opteron. Anyone with half a brain can see that no one in their right mind is going to buy a $7000 to develop an application for a market smaller than the number of people using VAX.
“PA is a pretty interesting architecture, and we’re glad they put a fork in it,” McNealy said. ”
LOL, yeah he is praising its death… yeah, he is crazy about the PA-RISC alright. Obviously you do not know the difference between irony and humor and praise. LOL!
“x86-64 is under the mutual agreement between AMD and Intel that was hammered out a few years ago when Intel was bought before the FTA. The same ones that demanded that Microsoft had to make concessions to their Passport authetication service.”
Again, do you know what “open” means? Obviously not, now you go ahead and try as joe six-pack to license the X86-64 and let me know how “open” it is.
“obviously you know jack squat about the market. Dell sells 24million, HP sells 23million and IBM around 2.4million, so if the total shipments per year is 100million, where is the other 47million coming form? the land of nod?”
LOL, yeah… check your figures mate, the total PC shipments for ’02 was around 47million units of which: HPQ shipped 7.8 million, DELL 3.8 mill, Fujitsu 2.9, IBM 2, acer 1.8, Apple 2.8 million, and a plethora of other suppliers. The home/hobbyist market is not the 50% you made it out to be by a long shot. Or else AMD would be in a much much much much better shape. So your “land of nod” is acutally the total PC shipments for ’02. Indeed you know a lot about the PC industry. LOL!
“Sure, and pay AUS$7000 for an Itanium computer that performs worse than a AUS$4000 Opteron. Anyone with half a brain can see that no one in their right mind is going to buy a $7000 to develop an application for a market smaller than the number of people using VAX.”
So? I did not say anything about the performance or the validity of the decision of buying an Itanium. You or a previous poster claimed that you could not buy an itanium from intel, only lease it. Which I called bullshit on, indeed you can buy an intanium from Intel. But like the rest of your response it is pretty hard to take you seriously.
LOL
“Wrong (again): Alpha arch is not carried over to Itanic, it’s PARISC that is, and it’s the PARISC team taht developed most of Itanic.”
No, the PA-RISC team did not developed most of the itanium. The 1st gen Itanium was mostly Intel, with HP adding PA-RISC compatibility. The next itanium revision has a lot of the Alpha team (which was transferred to both intel through the DEC/Intel fab deal after DEC won their settlement, and HP via Compaq), and they are indeed porting a lot of the Alpha technology and IP over to the next Itanium revision.
So before getting on your high horse get a bit of a more current background dude. Cheers!
The number for 2002 was something close to 125 million units shipped world wide and 2003 looks to be around 130 million units. Where did whaa get the 47 million number from?
Garner group…
“Wrong (again): Alpha arch is not carried over to Itanic, it’s PARISC that is, and it’s the PARISC team taht developed most of Itanic.”
No, the PA-RISC team did not developed most of the itanium. The 1st gen Itanium was mostly Intel, with HP adding PA-RISC compatibility. The next itanium revision has a lot of the Alpha team (which was transferred to both intel through the DEC/Intel fab deal after DEC won their settlement, and HP via Compaq), and they are indeed porting a lot of the Alpha technology and IP over to the next Itanium revision.
Nope, you are wrong. HP indeed put in most of the design into the first Itanium, and did almost the whole design of the Itanium2.
The “PA-RISC” compatibility is not a hardware compatibility. It’s done via a software translator. However since the ISA of the IA64 architecture contains lots of similar instructions as the PA-RISC ISA, the software translation is rather fast. These are facts, you can look them up at both the Intel and the HP homepage.
No wonder that IA64 and PA-RISC share quite a few common instructions since it was 1. designed as the official PA-RISC successor and 2. IA64 was created by the same developers that invented PA-RISC. HP didn’t just add a “PA-RISC hardware compatibility layer” into the Itanium. Well, they did if you define the whole core of the Itanium just as a compatibility thing
Also these are facts, just google for “IA64 PA-RISC successor” and you’ll find lots of interesting articles. Especially those from 1996/97 will clearly show you that the whole Itanium thingy was primarily started by HP.
As for putting IP of the Alpha into the Itanium: yes, Intel/HP said they wanted to incorporate features of the proposed EV8 architecture into future Itanium processors.
Ooops, I forgot to mention some interesting facts:
1. HP was the company that did research into VLIW, not Intel. EPIC was even formely known as PA-RISC Wide-Word (here you go)
2. The Intel-compatibility is done via a hardware unit that translates IA32 instructions into “native” IA64. Hence execution of legacy x86 applications is so slow. This unit is visibly seperate form the rest of the CPU, just look at http://cpus.hp.com/
3. The x86 hardware-compatibility was supposed to be taken out with the introduction of the McKinley (the current Itanium2), and replaced by an software emulator. It seems however that it will be still included even in the next Itanium generation (Madison).
whaaa (IP: —.cruzio.com) – Posted on 2003-10-21 18:57:19
“Wrong (again): Alpha arch is not carried over to Itanic, it’s PARISC that is, and it’s the PARISC team taht developed most of Itanic.”
No, the PA-RISC team did not developed most of the itanium. The 1st gen Itanium was mostly Intel, with HP adding PA-RISC compatibility. The next itanium revision has a lot of the Alpha team (which was transferred to both intel through the DEC/Intel fab deal after DEC won their settlement, and HP via Compaq), and they are indeed porting a lot of the Alpha technology and IP over to the next Itanium revision.
No, Itanium was going to be the successor to the PA-RISC, this was way before Alpha even got onto the radar. HP saw they needed something to replace it, rather than a mear “evolution” they went for an over haul which would last for a long time.
Intel were looking into getting into the high value market which was dominated by UNIX vendors such as SUN and IBM. Intel wanted to get into the market where there were high margins. HP teamed up with Intel and thus, the alliance was born.
RE Bob (IP: —.biz.rr.com) – Posted on 2003-10-21 21:04:56 and whaaa (IP: —.cruzio.com) – Posted on 2003-10-21 18:52:26
The number for 2002 was something close to 125 million units shipped world wide and 2003 looks to be around 130 million units. Where did whaa get the 47 million number from?[/i]
Sorry, I was looking at old statistics. Here is some interesting stats:
http://www.dataquest.com/press_gartner/quickstats/servers.html
According to the imformation there, 30% of vendors are “other”, that “other” is the market which don’t have access to Itanium motherboards and processors. So in a nutshell, Intel is shutting themselves out of 30% the market place per-quarter because they’re not willing work with motherboard producers and other IHV’s to make it possible for smaller vendors to enter the Itanium market.
Desktops:
http://www4.gartner.com/5_about/press_releases/prapr172003a.jsp
In this market, “Others” make up 55% of the market place. Assuming all things constant, 80million PC’s that are shipped are no made by the big 5. Again, Intel is locking itself out of 55% of the market by taking the approach they have.
Btw, the stats I gave before ( CooCooCaChoo (IP: —.a.001.cba.iprimus.net.au) – Posted on 2003-10-21 12:36:02 )was only an approaximation for a whole year whaa. The statistics YOU gave was a quarterly break down.