Re: How Alpha will save Itanium - must reading for Bill Todd!

From: Dirk Munk (munk_at_home.nl)
Date: 04/30/03 

Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 01:10:33 +0200

Bob Ceculski wrote:
> here is how Alpha will save Itanium Bill ... you
> can click link and read, but I especially cut out
> the paragraph for Bill how Alpha EV8-9 designs
> will fit nicely with Itanium ...
>
>
> http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=9127
>
>
I have read the article and this whole thread.

No one can accuse Bill of being the most diplomatic contributor to this group,
but I can certainly understand his anger and frustration.

Over the past decades we customers had to deal with non-existing or
contra-productive marketing, broken promises, roller coaster like direction
changes in policy, and so on, from Digital, Compaq and HP.

("Yes customer, your are very wise! VMS is indeed the best operating system in
the world ! Oh No, we will not market it. Please keep those qualities a secret,
since using VMS is Politicaly Incorrect. And if you like to migrate to Windooz
or Unix, we will help you ! ")

I still have that historic pdf file somewhere, in which all the virtues of the
Alpha over the Itanic are listed. And of course the solumn promise of a Compaq
Vice President that the development of the Alpha would go on, and on, and on,
for years to come. There even was a roadmap to EV12 !!

Then suddenly someone at Compaq found a wonderfull new CPU: The Itanic !!! Now
that is a processor, only years behind on schedule but who cares. It will be The
Industry Standard CPU. The Alpha development wasn't doing so well anyway, and it
was far to expensive to go ahead with this development.

And we the customers were suppose to believe that, after all the marketing
peptalk on the Alpha just a few months earlier.

This is what I think that happened.
The CEO's of HP and Compaq were talking about a merger, or better a takeover
from Compaq by HP. However there was one big problem. Both companies had a line
of midrange computer systems that were totaly incompatible. Keeping both lines
would have been impossible. At that time HP was working on the successor of the
PA Risc architecture, and they did that in cooperation with Intel. So they had a
  choice, using the superior Alpha architecture, or going for the unproven
Itanic. HP UX was without any doubt the more succesfull (not better) Unix
variant, and it would have meant a great loss of face for HP to stop the Itanic
development, and to port HP UX (with Tru64 components) to Alpha. So the Alpha
had to be killed, even if it was a far better design then the Itanic.

And so it went. Compaq announced that wonderfull sudden discovery of the Itanic,
and guess what, months later HP and Compaq announced they were having merger
talks !! And all the analists said: "Wow, what a nice idea. And what a
coincidence that both companies have choosen to use the Itanic in their future
server line. Yes, these companies have the same ideas on this matter, very good!
  Go on with the merger !"

Maybe it is possible in the end to build a kind of Frankenstein CPU with Alpha
and Itanic components that will have sufficient performance to build succesors
to the present Marvel systems.

But the all important question is: Will It Be A Industry Standard CPU. That was
the intention, and there HP and Compaq wanted to save money on CPU's and design!

If AMD proofs to be succesfull with their 64 bit X86 design (with Alpha
influence), I have no doubt Intel will be forced to produce a 64bit Pentium.
Unless they are very stupid, they already will have developed one, and they are
just waiting to see if they need it. If so, then that will be the end of the
Industry Standard label for the Itanic, and it will be a niche CPU just as any
other high end CPU like the Alpha, PA-Risc and Sparc. It that case HP will be
stuck with a rather mediocre CPU design, that is just as propriarty as any other
high-end CPU. Not a very nice prospect for HP and its customers......

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