Alpha: a volte ritornano

[Hal2001]

Last Alpha chip to arrive on Monday
Duck quacks its last, dies of Duck Envy

HP IS TO release the final Alpha processor on Monday bringing to an end the chip that had a cult following for the last 14 years.

The latest version, the Alpha EV7z, which runs at 1.3GHz, will make an appearance in the HP GS 1280 server.

Although it is the last Alpha that HP plans to build, the company plans to sell Alpha servers until 2006 and support them until 2011, as revealed here before.

The Alpha was created by Digital Equipment in 1992 and was praised to the skies for its blistering 200MHz 64-bit performance. It could also run multiple operating systems, Unix and NT. In 1999 it was the first chip to reach a clock speed of 1GHz.

While supported by a dedicated bunch of Alpha worshippers, the chip failed to make much of an impact. It cost heaps and finding applications that could run on it was as easy as finding the Holy Grail.

This was made worse when Compaq decided that it was not worth shipping a version of Windows NT for the Alpha in 1999.

Compaq acquired Alpha in 1998 when it bought Digital, and the chip became part of the HP Empire when it borged Compaq. Oddly, Compaq managed to ship the Alpha and its team to Intel before the HP acquisition, as we revealed here.

Many of the Alpha architects left HP to join Intel and it is believed that much Alpha technology will be reincarnated in Chipzilla technology. µ

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17954

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