Author: David Blackman
Date: 19:46:43 01/22/01
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On January 22, 2001 at 14:51:12, Dann Corbit wrote: >Another example of a superior technology that will remain a niche market >(Betamax lost to VHS, Motorola 68000 lost to 8088). > >Too bad. Probably the best chip on the planet. COMPAQ seems to have inherited >DEC's incredible propensity for really, really bad marketing decisions. Pulling >the plug on NT for the Alpha series was a real tragedy. > >The True64 UNIX solutions? Far too expensive. > >The Linux solutions? Cripple the best chip in the world with one of the worst >compilers. > >Well, there it is. Compaq will sell you their compilers to run on Linux. Not sure of the price. Code generated by their compilers can be sold (or given away) for Linux use without paying royalties. I don't know that GCC is actually one of the world's worst compilers. It's not great on X86, but is passable on most RISC chips. I compiled my program Desperado using both GCC and the Compaq compiler for Alpha a couple of years ago. After finding the best flags for both, the GCC version ran 10% faster. The two other programs i cared about speed for (not chess programs) ran the same speed with both compilers. Most people find that their important programs run faster with the Compaq compiler, but usually not by much. I agree that Compaq's marketing of Alpha is a bad joke, and prices are mostly too high.
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