CompuServe Messages

I don't know much, but here goes. It's a RISC chip that comes in two flavours at this point (if the 21066 is the first generation, which is what I'm talking about) being 150MHz and 200MHz. It's a super-scalar chip, effectively performing 2 instructions per clock cycle, resulting in ratings of 300MIPS and 400MIPS respectively. In a recent PC-Mag feature on the Pentium, only HP's PA-RISC chip was rated faster than the Alpha at floating point math. DEC planned the Alpha as an entirely new design/family of chips, planned to last into the next century. The first generation of chips requires very expensive, complicated, difficult-to-design motherboards. However, that apparently isn't built in to the design of the chip, and DEC plans future low-cost derivatives of the 21066 which will be much cheaper to use – and some of which will include, _on-chip_, and interface to Intel's PCI local bus. So I doubt that C= will be coming out with Alpha-based Amigas tomorrow – the OS has to be ported first. On the other hand, there is that strategic something-or-other deal btw C= and DEC, so maybe we have something to look forward to.