Alphas get Cheaper? 86
zealot writes "Check out this article at The Register for info about cheap Samsung Alpha Processors. It costs $250 for a 533 MHz when ordered in volume (1000 procs or more). Now if we could just find a middle man to buy in bulk and sell them for, say $300. "
alpha array (Score:1)
Still, imaging the power of 1000 alpha computers. Go for it in a DES4...
DEC (Score:1)
Alpha, Alpha, ALPHA! Wohoo! (Score:1)
Slashdot Credit Union? (Score:1)
I got my $100 bucks right here. (pats back pocket)
Slashdot Credit Union? Hmm (Score:1)
SCU (for lack of a better name) purchases 5000 of these CPUs, with motherboard, sells them for a profit, and gives the profit to suitable open-source organizations such as Debian, the FSF, or SPI(add organizations to taste) while retaining the wholesale cost of the processor (to break even on the whole deal).
Basic breakdown: Buy hardware, sell at a profit, give profit to (eg) Debian, keep wholesale costs so the purchasing organization breaks even. Think this would be workable? Any comments from financial/business types out there?
Shopping around (Score:1)
This is great news... I was just looking to buy a new AXP motherboard.
Right now I was thinking of buying the 164 UX board with 2 or 4 MB of RAM. The board has onboard SCSI and 100 Mbit Ethernet.
You can get more info on this board at
[quant-x.com]
http://www.quant-x.com/Alpha/frm3ATXUX.htm
Right now the cheapest prices I found in Europe
are:
UX Board 2 MB : 1299 DM
533 MHz CPU : 399 DM
128 MB ECC RAM: 345 DM
You need to add another 16% VAT to those prices
in $ US with tax included, that is something like
UX Board 2 MB : $930
533 MHz CPU : $286
128 MB ECC RAM: $248
Once the 800 MHz CPU's become cheap, one could upgrade.
My obvious question:
1. Has anybody seen better offers? Where would you buy your AXP stuff?
2. If a bunch of people in Europe could get together, would we get better prices?
Slashdot Credit Union? (Score:1)
I'd also like a piece of it.
Unfortunately, MBs are expensive, NOT for long! (Score:1)
I may be wrong but if I interpreted this summary of the KP21264 on the Samsung site right,
quote:
"- Industry open standard socket - AMD K7 chipset support and
Slot A interchageability on the same motherboard "
( http://www.samsung.com/news/1998/ssi0406b.html )
The KP21264 will support the chipsets used for the
AMD K7. Since this CPU and it's supporting MBs will go into mass production shortly, I think the prices of MB capable of running Alpha procs wil drop considerably...
WRONG, the geeks want it (Score:1)
Of course the geeks want hetrogenious processing systems. It is cool. Talk to your mac buddy about the ppc in your computer, then the pc bigot about the k7, and then the real geeks about the true power of the alpha, without losing x86 or ppc compatability.
usefull is a different story, they don't care. If the hardware will support two different chips, I'm sure linux will gain support.
Go PowerPC! (Score:1)
...oh well. Someday I'll fulfill my dream of PowerPC desktop world domination. Duopolies are better than monopolies.
MHz != speed (Score:1)
Go Celeron! (Score:1)
--
Yes (Score:1)
of course (Score:1)
--
oops "when one even" = "when one event" (n/t) (Score:1)
Alpha dominating (Score:1)
In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if these lower prices weren't part of a larger strategy by all Alpha licensees. It's now or never - let's see if everyone comes down, at least on the slower Alphas.
--
Pardon me! (Score:1)
--
Alpha and K7 share SMP architecture? (Score:1)
Why I want K7+Alpha in same system (Score:1)
I wonder if anyone's done a patch to make WINE use the SunPC card (486) in SPARC Linux? Hum. Then again, noone else would put twin turbos in their Volvo either, but hey, that's just the way I am.
Me Too (Score:1)
I'll give you 35 Slashdollars for that there Alpha.
Yes, but where can I buy *one* (Score:1)
I have 100 Slashdollars right here [pats back pocket]
Actually, yes. (Score:1)
anyone overclocked Alpha's? (Score:1)
Remember, they aren't really _different_ chips, they make a batch, and select out the better ones through testing..
Keep em cool and they run happy..
Alpha dominating (Score:1)
;-)
Cheap Alpha chips (Score:1)
And if the 21264 and the AMD K7 really are slot A interchangeable, we should finally have inexpensive motherboards into which to plug our inexpensive Alpha chips.
I want a 21264, and I want it NOW! If not sooner!
Unfortunately, MBs are expensive (Score:1)
What do I gain? (Score:1)
server. This is the current base box. It's
faster than my 300 Mhz.K6 Desktop but, in most things, not much faster with RH 5.1. Byte bench
marks are less in some areas. For this to be a
big deal, more optimization and tuned apps would
help a lot. Neither box uses the proprietary slot1
architecture, however, so I do gain satisfaction.
Attn. Compaq! we want the hotter stuff cheaper.
Cheap Alpha chips (Score:1)
But you would have to change the BIOS for switching CPUs, I expect.
21264 notes (Score:1)
There are 21264 benchmarks for systems between 500 and 575MHz floating around; a dual 21264/500 board costs about $9000 at the moment, with the targetted market being embedded controllers which need that sort of performance.
Digital are very good at doing extremely aggressive speed-binning; they have 616, 625, 633 and even the occasional 666MHz 21164 running in very high-end systems, and they can produce 600MHz chips in large enough quantities that SGI can build 1024-way multi-processing T3E/1200 boxes.
The 21264 is not a small nor a simple chip; 64k data, 64k instruction caches already take up an awful lot of transistors. It has 15.2 million transistors, and is huge (300mm^2) in the 0.35u process. It bears about the same relation to the 21164 as the PPro does to the Pentium - much cleverer scheduling, much cleverer renaming, out-of-order execution, and all the other techniques required to get great performance out of an architecture.
Since it has a reasonable number of registers, and a sane FP design, it's about 50% faster on integer work and 2x as fast on FP work as a P3 of the same clock speed.
And it's been wildly delayed; the announcement I have with details in it was produced on 25/10/1996, and said 'samples first quarter 1997, volume second half 1997'; Digital representatives were promising volume production of 21264 systems by October 1997. If it had come out then, Intel would be in considerable trouble.
of course [They use PC hardware!] (Score:1)
Alpha's great, make sure you get a cache (Score:1)
I'm looking forward to the 21264 (and up) which will have SMP connectivity built in.
Slashdot Mint (Score:1)
If there is a law agianst it, than its and USA one. Up here, Canadian Tire (a hardware/everything store), a national chain gives away Canadian Tire money, something like 1% of purchases, and takes it back at par.
Its printed on the same stock as Canadian currency (less holograms we have on 20's and up) at the same mint, a crown (ie government run sort of for-profit) corperation.
dcginc DS20 Clone? (Score:1)
Thanks for the info.
Caches and what Samsung's offering. (Score:1)
I didn't see a price sheet on the site. You may have to write them directly in order to get pricing information (I know that that's the case with Compaq's alpha pages).
Here's Alpha's roadmap... (Score:1)
How they managed to pull 600 MHz at 0.35 without overheating is beyond me. I'm assuming that that's with a dual-phase clock. I'm also assuming that they can do a significant amount of work in one clock cycle. Does anyone have more information on the transistor technology used for various parts of the chip (i.e. CMOS, BiCMOS, ECL), and on the 21164 instruction set with clocks-to-execute information?
Why they're fabricating at 0.28 is a mystery to me, as most fabs can run at 0.25 now.
If they can pull 750 MHz at 0.28, then the 21264 should reach 1.2-1.4 GHz on 0.18 by late 1H-00 or so.
Re. clock speed, this will always influence performance. However, I agree that making sure that memory and peripherals can keep up with the processor is important too.
Web Browsers, Linux, and Alpha (Score:1)
Does anyone have a web browser other than lynx running on their Alpha under Linux?
I've finally got X running on my AS 200 and now I don't even know what to do with it. I've been using the machine as a web server and to play with Samba. I'd sure like to be able to surf the web with it. I'm the hacker equivalent of a *script-kiddie* when it comes to programming, so I'm looking for compiled binaries that are known to work. Help, anyone?
Linux Alpha Company? (Score:1)
Unfortunately, MBs are expensive (Score:1)
FX32 isn't slow (Score:1)
BTW - FX32 isn't a Windows emulation system. It only emulates the Intel processor core. NT itself does all of the software work.