I seem to remember that Alpha’s were very fast for the time but their maximum optimization level waived IEEE floating point conformance. This, of course, drove us nuts trying to validate ports of numerically intensive code. Less interesting chips with lower optimization and limited market penetration.
Now, HP’s PA-RISC chips…. Those things were fast and easier to work with. Curiously, with SoftPC they could do windows faster than a 486 could. Slaughtered all sorts of mini-supers they did.
Would have been interesting if alpha survived to compete with SGI’s MIPS.
> David Jessel, the Alpha's senior product manager, claims that Alpha fans have nothing to worry about. "Compaq has been fully supportive of the Alpha and is continuing to invest in it," Jessel said.
That worked out swimmingly for Alpha... >sigh<
I never programmed Alpha assembly, so I don't really have a feel for the architecture. I did deploy some Alpha-based boxes running NT, and they were very nice. They didn't feel pieced-together like x86 servers did.
I seem to remember that Alpha’s were very fast for the time but their maximum optimization level waived IEEE floating point conformance. This, of course, drove us nuts trying to validate ports of numerically intensive code. Less interesting chips with lower optimization and limited market penetration.
Now, HP’s PA-RISC chips…. Those things were fast and easier to work with. Curiously, with SoftPC they could do windows faster than a 486 could. Slaughtered all sorts of mini-supers they did.
Would have been interesting if alpha survived to compete with SGI’s MIPS.
It’s so good to re-read Tom Halfhill’s articles. I wonder where he’s been in the past… checks notes… 30 years I haven’t seen his writings.
> David Jessel, the Alpha's senior product manager, claims that Alpha fans have nothing to worry about. "Compaq has been fully supportive of the Alpha and is continuing to invest in it," Jessel said.
That worked out swimmingly for Alpha... >sigh<
I never programmed Alpha assembly, so I don't really have a feel for the architecture. I did deploy some Alpha-based boxes running NT, and they were very nice. They didn't feel pieced-together like x86 servers did.
From back when IA-64 (A.K.A. Itanium) was supposed to take Intel to the promised land.