5 ms·

Uh, no. 'Alpha' as in before 'Beta'.

by Alekhine 5y ago

saagarjha 5y ago
(That’s the joke.)
- Alekhine 5y ago
  Damn it. And I spend so much time making fun of people who can't hear sarcasm.
qbasic_forever 5y ago
I want to live in the alternate 90's universe where a slim laptop with an alpha processor and Apple badge exists. RISC architecture is going to change everything!
- phs318u 5y ago
  It's funny but you're not the only one. Digital had some great engineering. Apple had a great understanding of the consumer and UX. Could have been awesome. I also thought that a similar alliance would have been awesome. Imagine if Apple had bought Sun instead of Oracle.
- tomcam 5y ago
  At an internal demo at Microsoft in the 90s they had VB running on MIPS and Alpha
  - garaetjjte 5y ago
    Windows NT was available for MIPS/Alpha.
- shagie 5y ago
  Many years ago, I almost bought a Tadpole. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadpole_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadpole_Computer It was the sparc flavor... but they had an Alpha too.
- laurencerowe 5y ago
  DEC's StrongARM processor was almost this: > According to Allen Baum, the StrongARM traces its history to attempts to make a low-power version of the DEC Alpha, which DEC's engineers quickly concluded was not possible. They then became interested in designs dedicated to low-power applications which led them to the ARM family. One of the only major users of the ARM for performance-related products at that time was Apple, whose Newton device was based on the ARM platform. DEC approached Apple wondering if they might be interested in a high-performance ARM, to which the Apple engineers replied "Phhht, yeah. You can't do it, but, yeah, if you could we'd use it." -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM And while the IP didn't directly influence Apple Silicon, the experience did: > P. A. Semi (originally Palo Alto Semiconductor[1]) was an American fabless semiconductor company founded in Santa Clara, California in 2003 by Daniel W. Dobberpuhl,[2][3] who was previously the lead designer for the DEC Alpha 21064 and StrongARM processors. The company employed a 150-person engineering team which included people who had previously worked on processors like Itanium, Opteron and UltraSPARC. Apple Inc acquired P.A. Semi for $278 million in April 2008. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi
  - dm319 5y ago
    Oh interesting. Think that's what was running on my Psion 5mx. GP needs a Psion 7 then.
  - qbasic_forever 5y ago
    Hah wow, that is too cool to see it all come back around with ARM. Imagine if they kept refining the Newton instead of shelving it until the iPad was really possible.
  - Joeri 5y ago
    That’s fascinating and dovetails well with Windows NT’s origin story, where internal OS research at DEC that got canceled (the MICA project) ended up with its lead architect Dave Cutler and his team walking out and moving to Microsoft, where they used the knowledge they had learned building MICA to build Windows NT. And then there is the DEC PDP, which enabled some of the former Multics developers (Ken Thompson & co) to take what they had learned building Multics and apply it to the affordable PDP hardware to build Unix, which then inspired Linux. DEC may no longer exist, but their shadow reaches a long way into the future.

Uh, no. 'Alpha' as in before 'Beta'.

saagarjha 5y ago

(That’s the joke.)

Alekhine 5y ago
Damn it. And I spend so much time making fun of people who can't hear sarcasm.

qbasic_forever 5y ago

I want to live in the alternate 90's universe where a slim laptop with an alpha processor and Apple badge exists. RISC architecture is going to change everything!

phs318u 5y ago
It's funny but you're not the only one. Digital had some great engineering. Apple had a great understanding of the consumer and UX. Could have been awesome. I also thought that a similar alliance would have been awesome. Imagine if Apple had bought Sun instead of Oracle.
tomcam 5y ago
At an internal demo at Microsoft in the 90s they had VB running on MIPS and Alpha
- garaetjjte 5y ago
  Windows NT was available for MIPS/Alpha.
shagie 5y ago
Many years ago, I almost bought a Tadpole. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadpole_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadpole_Computer It was the sparc flavor... but they had an Alpha too.
laurencerowe 5y ago
DEC's StrongARM processor was almost this: > According to Allen Baum, the StrongARM traces its history to attempts to make a low-power version of the DEC Alpha, which DEC's engineers quickly concluded was not possible. They then became interested in designs dedicated to low-power applications which led them to the ARM family. One of the only major users of the ARM for performance-related products at that time was Apple, whose Newton device was based on the ARM platform. DEC approached Apple wondering if they might be interested in a high-performance ARM, to which the Apple engineers replied "Phhht, yeah. You can't do it, but, yeah, if you could we'd use it." -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM And while the IP didn't directly influence Apple Silicon, the experience did: > P. A. Semi (originally Palo Alto Semiconductor[1]) was an American fabless semiconductor company founded in Santa Clara, California in 2003 by Daniel W. Dobberpuhl,[2][3] who was previously the lead designer for the DEC Alpha 21064 and StrongARM processors. The company employed a 150-person engineering team which included people who had previously worked on processors like Itanium, Opteron and UltraSPARC. Apple Inc acquired P.A. Semi for $278 million in April 2008. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi
- dm319 5y ago
  Oh interesting. Think that's what was running on my Psion 5mx. GP needs a Psion 7 then.
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  Hah wow, that is too cool to see it all come back around with ARM. Imagine if they kept refining the Newton instead of shelving it until the iPad was really possible.
- Joeri 5y ago
  That’s fascinating and dovetails well with Windows NT’s origin story, where internal OS research at DEC that got canceled (the MICA project) ended up with its lead architect Dave Cutler and his team walking out and moving to Microsoft, where they used the knowledge they had learned building MICA to build Windows NT. And then there is the DEC PDP, which enabled some of the former Multics developers (Ken Thompson & co) to take what they had learned building Multics and apply it to the affordable PDP hardware to build Unix, which then inspired Linux. DEC may no longer exist, but their shadow reaches a long way into the future.