Re: Alpha remembrance day

Michael Kraemer wrote:
yeah, promise, and that's it. Technical merits are nothing
if the time window for broad introduction has closed.

Well, considering it was the first "mainstream" 64 bit architecture, I
wouldn't say that Alpha was late. If at all, it was early to the market.
DEC was late only in lowering prices for its VAX lines to stay in
business until Alpha came along.

The FABs were at the time, a good idea,

No it wasn't. It was another example of DECs hybris:
"we are so great, we can do everything on our own".

At the time, intel was still just a toy controller maker and there
weren't that many high tech FABs that were commercially available. For
DEC, having its own FAB was a way to be to market before any others by
building a next generation FAB now. Had DEC succesfully commercialised
its FAB business, it may have had enough business to pay for upgrades.
In the end, DEC didn't commercialise that business and it lost big money
and certaintly coudn,t afford to build a next generation FAB. DEC
vacating that market left the door opened for IBM and Intel to
commerciallise their FAB business. And because of the extremely high
costs of FABs, fewer and fewer FABs can be built, and those who stayed
in teh business now get everybody else's business.

Only the fittest survive. DEC didn't exercise its FAB enough and was
eliminated from the race.

IIRC that happened when DEC still existed.
And too me (and most others) was another sign of DEC heading
for their final collapse.

In the 3 years prior to the official announcement of the Compaq buying
DEC, Palmer was acting on the requests of Pfeiffer to scale down Digital
and get rid of parts that Compaq wasn't interested in. Palmer proudly
announced that on CNN on the day the merger was announced.


IBM had big losses in 1992/1993, but they also still had deep pockets.

Read Lou Gerstner's book. When he got in, IBM had already contracted
with merhant banks to find buyers to sell IBM off to raise money to
survive. The state of IBM was far worse than people had been lead to
believe. It no longer had such deep pockets.


But IBM already had at least some strategy when Gerstner
took over,

Again, read his book. The strategy was to break the company up. It was
Gerstner that immediatly cancelled this and set the company on a course
where it woudl have its own strategy and compete.

Now this is hard to imagine. At that time Compaq was already three times
bigger than DEC. A dwarf swallowing a giant ?

Digital was #2 computer maker for a very long time, and I believ it
still was at the time Palmer took the helm. DEC was downsized out of
existance uder Palmer, partly due to "suggestions" by Pfeiffer.


BTW, I got my "DEC is Dead, Long Live DEC" book today (it is softcover
BTW). Looking forwards to reading it.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Alpha remembrance day
    ... AMD wanted to use the FAB. ... wouldn't take the business, wanting to keep the FAB ready for more Alpha ... by any other vendors. ... was in fact quite sucessfull at attracting other vendors to use POWER ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • Re: Alpha remembrance day
    ... AMD wanted to use the FAB. ... wouldn't take the business, wanting to keep the FAB ready for more Alpha ... by any other vendors. ... was in fact quite sucessfull at attracting other vendors to use POWER ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • Re: Alpha remembrance day
    ... AMD wanted to use the FAB. ... wouldn't take the business, wanting to keep the FAB ready for more Alpha ... by any other vendors. ... was in fact quite sucessfull at attracting other vendors to use POWER ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • Re: Alpha remembrance day
    ... wouldn't say that Alpha was late. ... having its own FAB was a way to be to market before any others by ... its FAB business, it may have had enough business to pay for upgrades. ... When he got in, IBM had already contracted ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • Re: Alpha remembrance day
    ... wouldn't say that Alpha was late. ... having its own FAB was a way to be to market before any others by ... its FAB business, it may have had enough business to pay for upgrades. ... Compare that with the confuse DEC actions (even before Palmer). ...
    (comp.os.vms)