Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 10:12:09 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Yura Socolov <yura@matrix.binary.net> Cc: Wolfram Schneider <wosch@cs.tu-berlin.de>, freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD/Alpha Web page Message-ID: <25172.885924729@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 27 Jan 1998 07:20:11 CST." <19980127072011.01389@matrix.binary.net>
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> I hate to be the one saying this, but now, given alpha's questionable > future, based on Compaq's and DEC's decision to kill any progress in favor > of elite Intel's chips, do people here still generally think there is > much point in continuing this port? It's definitely a question to be asked and considered. > I would personally love to see it happen, and i'm sure there will still > be a lot of alpha hardware around for quite some time, but will there > be any future without further development of the hardware? Probably not, no. I think it's fairly safe to say that the future of the ALPHA is bleak unless some other company purchases just this piece of the technology from Compaq. It's been known to happen, though such "comebacks" are still rare in the world of high-tech. I think the Amiga, for example, tried to return to life at least twice without much luck though that's also admittedly a completely different market. The question for me remains more of "are there enough ALPHAs out there doing especially sexy things to justify keeping the port alive as a transition aid for the next 2-3 years?" The Linux people have been crowing for some time, for example, that the special effects for the movie "Titanic" were all done on a 150 processor Linux/ALPHA farm and I'm pretty sure that there have to be ALPHAs elsewhere doing similarly high-powered tasks where Intel stuff just didn't cut it. Are these people worth trying to get on board just on the basis of what they're doing with the technology rather than just counting sheer numbers? There is certainly merit to this argument and it's just one of the many things we need to discuss. Another thing worthy of discussion is whether or not using the ALPHA as a "64 bit springboard" is something we want to do just because the ALPHA happens to be there right now and we NEED to be 64 bit clean at some point, if only to be prepared for the arrival of Intel's Merced architecture. Comments? Jordan
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