Author: Roberto Waldteufel
Date: 18:18:56 06/13/98
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On June 12, 1998 at 19:34:04, Tim Mann wrote: >>>>I think they were bought by Compaq, but will still produce the Alpha >>>>(and later generations) for some time. Intel has some access to >>> >>>Huh. At the Intel employee orientation some guy told me about reworking >>>the current Alpha fabs to Pentium II fabs. Maybe this was wishful >>>thinking. >> >>I'm not sure of the exact Intel/Alpha relation. > >Here's the story. > >- We sold our fab line (in other words, our chip factory) to Intel. Fab >lines are very expensive to operate, and it is much more economical for >a company that makes many different semiconductor products to operate >one than for a company that makes just a few. This makes us a "fabless >semiconductor company", the same model as Sun (with Sparc), SGI/MIPS, >and several other companies use. > >- Intel has a contract to manufacture Alphas for us for several years. >The contract is nonexclusive; we are free to hire other chip >manufacturing companies to make Alphas for us too. We definitely have >such deals under investigation; I don't know if anything has been >consummated or announced. > >- We **have not** sold the Alpha design or technology to Intel. The >Alpha design teams continue to work for us, and they are designing new >generations of Alpha chips. The rights to the technology remain with >us. (We do have a patent cross-licensing agreement with Intel, but the >agreement specifically says that Intel can't use our patents to design >their own Alphas. Also, some of our Alpha intellectual property is in >the form of trade secrets, not patents, and Intel has no access to >those.) > >It is wrongheaded to talk about whether Intel will "scrap" Alpha, no >matter whether your opinion is positive or negative. That is simply not >Intel's decision to make! They could choose not to make Alphas for us >anymore after their contract is up. That would not trouble us a bit; we >could easily find other manufacturers, and might do so anyway if we can >get a better deal than Intel gives us. > >- Finally, as of yesterday, "we" are Compaq: Compaq has bought Digital. >Compaq is not going to "scrap" Alpha either; Alpha was one of the major >attractions that led them to buy us. By the way, Digital actually has >more employees than Compaq, so I expect the combined company to retain a >strong Digital flavor. > > --Tim Mann Hi Tim I have been following the posts about the Alpha Chip, of which I was unaware before I joined CCC. Forgive my ignorance, but could you explain do Digital (or should I say Compaq) manufacture just the chip, or do you supply complete computers built around the chip. I presently use a Pentium 333MHz based system, but from what I read about the Alpha, it is far better in almost every respect. Since chess programming, and to some extent also other strategy games programming is my main reason for owning a computer in the first place, I am rather interested to find out more. The idea of a 600 MHz processor with 64-bit addressing for bitboards and opcodes for FindBit and PopCount is something I have only ever dreamed of! What I want to know realy is - where can I get one and what would it cost? Best wishes, Roberto
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