[rescue] i860 Success

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Sun, 02 May 2004 @ 20:53 -0500, Patrick Finnegan said:

> On Sun, 2 May 2004, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> 
> > I still like Alpha better, even though it is old and crusty now.
> 
> Old and crusty?!?  Just because Intel wants to keep it dead so it doesn't
> compete with the x86, it's definately neither old nor crusty, IMO.

Old and crusty in the sense that it is a late 80s design, which in the
CPU world, is ancient history. 

Alpha is ahead of a lot of the crap we buy every day, but it is still an
old design. 

One of the side effects of sitting on it for so long is that changes
it needs will be harder to do now.  Sitting idle means it didn't get
continued research and incremental improvements, so there would be a
catchup phase needed to push it faster and update the design with things
learned since its last major revision.

Also, I believe it is HP sitting on it, not Intel.

It would take a miracle at this point for the Alpha to be reborn or even
seriously marketed again.

So much waste in the world...

-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny." --
Unknown]