From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Nov 21 23:13:18 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-31-203-60.mmcable.com [65.31.203.60]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 69F4937B417 for ; Wed, 21 Nov 2001 23:13:08 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 4799 invoked by uid 100); 22 Nov 2001 07:13:07 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15356.42371.903393.208024@guru.mired.org> Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2001 01:13:07 -0600 To: "Justin P. Michel" Cc: questions@freebsd.org, Subject: Re: alpha vs i386 In-Reply-To: <107012852@toto.iv> X-Mailer: VM 6.90 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG [Context recovered from top posting.] Justin P. Michel types: > From: "AJ Adams" > > Do I need alpha or i386? My specs are listed below. > Alpha is a separate CPU line, that I honestly don't know too much about. :) I can summarize everything most people need to know about Alpha CPUs in one sentence: They've been end-of-lifed by Compaq, and can be considered a dead architecture. For a bit more background, they were designed by DEC, which Compaq bought. For a time, they were the CPU for the fastest single-cpu workstations around. I believe they were the first processor ever to be clocked to a gigahertz, it having been done in the DEC labs back around '90. I have personal reasons relating to SPIM for having no regrets over their passing. http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Q: How do you make the gods laugh? A: Tell them your plans. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message