6 ms·

The Alpha was such a fantastic chip. I thought it would take off since you could get them in an AT form factor system and Windows was ported over. They were so

The Alpha was such a fantastic chip. I thought it would take off since you could get them in an AT form factor system and Windows was ported over. They were so much cheaper than any Sparc or MIPS.

salimmadjd 6y ago
I made the same bet too with my very first startup (1996). We bought a clone version, and at the time was much cheap than the sun servers.
schoen 6y ago
I remember my friend running Linux on an Alpha workstation around 1999, and you could run a command like date -d 'now+10000years' to find out what day of the week it would be in 10000 years. Whereas on a typical 32-bit Intel system, date -d 'now+40years' didn't even work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem
- drran 6y ago
  It will be the same day of the week. $ LANG=en_US date -d 'now+10000years' Sun 06 Dec 12020 01:34:36 PM EET
macjohnmcc 6y ago
Way back in the day when I worked at Microsoft I had a DEC Alpha, MIPS and X86 computer each running Windows. I miss the Alpha but I don't miss having to support so many processors for the same platform.
- tomcam 6y ago
  Were you in Dev Tools?
  - macjohnmcc 6y ago
    I worked on the System Management Server team. We had to support all of the platforms. I also worked trying to get the product to compile for the PPC as they were working on NT for the PPC. They never solved the problem of linking MFC as a DLL working. They put the brakes on PPC not long after. There related to function addresses being put in a table and when the functions were from the DLL and the call was from the EXE it would wind up with a register set to execute functions in the EXE and not the DLL.
    - toast0 6y ago
      NT 4 was released for PPC, so perhaps the brakes were unapplied after. Here's a tale (not mine) of installing it: https://omgwtfbbq.ca/2018/07/installing-windows-nt-4-0-on-a-powerpc/ https://omgwtfbbq.ca/2018/07/installing-windows-nt-4-0-on-a-...
      - macjohnmcc 6y ago
        It was just after this that they were trying to get their server products compiled (SMS included) for PPC. But the tools were not ready for everything. They put on the brakes not long after I pointed out the problem with the register not being set properly for function calls using pointers into the DLL from the EXE.
CalChris 6y ago
It lives on in the Sunway Taihu Light. https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2019/04/102740474-05-01-acc.pdf https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20...
- jeffbee 6y ago
  It lived on in a much larger way than that by becoming, in a certain sense, the AMD Opteron. There's been a travelling team of hotshot CPU architects who move around the industry together and they gave us the later (i.e. the ones that were actually good) DEC Alpha, the AMD K8 "Opteron", the Apple A-series CPUs that we're all fawning over right now, and the AMD Zen series.
  - KMag 6y ago
    I remember keeping my eye out for the PASemi IPO, based on the track record of that team, and then Apple went and ruined it by buying the company to acqui-hire that team for their A-series CPUs.
- gnufx 6y ago
  I don't understand how this theory about Alpha and Sunway originated. Even if numerology suggested the Sunway chips were Alpha-derived, Dongarra[1] refutes it. TaihuLight is memory-constrained. The Alphas we used had enough cache to hold a crystallography image, and more-or-less a whole dataset in main memory. If people hadn't insisted on using PDP-11 software designs, visitors would have been even more impressed how fast they were. 1. https://performance.netlib.org/utk/people/JackDongarra/PAPERS/sunway-report-2016.pdf https://performance.netlib.org/utk/people/JackDongarra/PAPER...
  - CalChris 6y ago
    Dick Sites, and he'd kinda know. https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2019/04/102740474-05-01-acc.pdf https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20...
walrus01 6y ago
> The Alpha was such a fantastic chip. I thought it would take off since you could get them in an AT form factor system At that time period it failed because the design wasn't sufficiently open to allow manufacturing of motherboards by ten different Taiwanese motherboard makers. The whole x86 AT form factor PC component ecosystem was there to support it, except for the motherboards, which were treated as a proprietary secret sauce. It was totally cost prohibitive to attract a large base of independent software developers. At the time the first Alphas came out, you could buy or build a pretty nice Pentium based desktop for around $2000 to $2500, when the alpha desktops cost $4000+. And this was in 1994-1996 pre-inflation US dollars. Ultimately it had the same problem as the NeXT workstation and cube, that very few ordinary people could actually afford to buy one.

The Alpha was such a fantastic chip. I thought it would take off since you could get them in an AT form factor system and Windows was ported over. They were so much cheaper than any Sparc or MIPS.

salimmadjd 6y ago

I made the same bet too with my very first startup (1996). We bought a clone version, and at the time was much cheap than the sun servers.

schoen 6y ago

I remember my friend running Linux on an Alpha workstation around 1999, and you could run a command like date -d 'now+10000years' to find out what day of the week it would be in 10000 years. Whereas on a typical 32-bit Intel system, date -d 'now+40years' didn't even work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

drran 6y ago
It will be the same day of the week. $ LANG=en_US date -d 'now+10000years' Sun 06 Dec 12020 01:34:36 PM EET

macjohnmcc 6y ago

Way back in the day when I worked at Microsoft I had a DEC Alpha, MIPS and X86 computer each running Windows. I miss the Alpha but I don't miss having to support so many processors for the same platform.

tomcam 6y ago
Were you in Dev Tools?
- macjohnmcc 6y ago
  I worked on the System Management Server team. We had to support all of the platforms. I also worked trying to get the product to compile for the PPC as they were working on NT for the PPC. They never solved the problem of linking MFC as a DLL working. They put the brakes on PPC not long after. There related to function addresses being put in a table and when the functions were from the DLL and the call was from the EXE it would wind up with a register set to execute functions in the EXE and not the DLL.
  - toast0 6y ago
    NT 4 was released for PPC, so perhaps the brakes were unapplied after. Here's a tale (not mine) of installing it: https://omgwtfbbq.ca/2018/07/installing-windows-nt-4-0-on-a-powerpc/ https://omgwtfbbq.ca/2018/07/installing-windows-nt-4-0-on-a-...
    - macjohnmcc 6y ago
      It was just after this that they were trying to get their server products compiled (SMS included) for PPC. But the tools were not ready for everything. They put on the brakes not long after I pointed out the problem with the register not being set properly for function calls using pointers into the DLL from the EXE.

CalChris 6y ago

It lives on in the Sunway Taihu Light. https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2019/04/102740474-05-01-acc.pdf https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20...

jeffbee 6y ago
It lived on in a much larger way than that by becoming, in a certain sense, the AMD Opteron. There's been a travelling team of hotshot CPU architects who move around the industry together and they gave us the later (i.e. the ones that were actually good) DEC Alpha, the AMD K8 "Opteron", the Apple A-series CPUs that we're all fawning over right now, and the AMD Zen series.
- KMag 6y ago
  I remember keeping my eye out for the PASemi IPO, based on the track record of that team, and then Apple went and ruined it by buying the company to acqui-hire that team for their A-series CPUs.
gnufx 6y ago
I don't understand how this theory about Alpha and Sunway originated. Even if numerology suggested the Sunway chips were Alpha-derived, Dongarra[1] refutes it. TaihuLight is memory-constrained. The Alphas we used had enough cache to hold a crystallography image, and more-or-less a whole dataset in main memory. If people hadn't insisted on using PDP-11 software designs, visitors would have been even more impressed how fast they were. 1. https://performance.netlib.org/utk/people/JackDongarra/PAPERS/sunway-report-2016.pdf https://performance.netlib.org/utk/people/JackDongarra/PAPER...
- CalChris 6y ago
  Dick Sites, and he'd kinda know. https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2019/04/102740474-05-01-acc.pdf https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20...

walrus01 6y ago

> The Alpha was such a fantastic chip. I thought it would take off since you could get them in an AT form factor system At that time period it failed because the design wasn't sufficiently open to allow manufacturing of motherboards by ten different Taiwanese motherboard makers. The whole x86 AT form factor PC component ecosystem was there to support it, except for the motherboards, which were treated as a proprietary secret sauce. It was totally cost prohibitive to attract a large base of independent software developers. At the time the first Alphas came out, you could buy or build a pretty nice Pentium based desktop for around $2000 to $2500, when the alpha desktops cost $4000+. And this was in 1994-1996 pre-inflation US dollars. Ultimately it had the same problem as the NeXT workstation and cube, that very few ordinary people could actually afford to buy one.