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AMD

AMD's Fab 30 Revealed 145

Posted by michael from the blue-man-group-jealous dept.
Harkids writes "AnandTech posted a sweet article about a recent trip to AMD's newest chip manufacturing plant, Fab 30 in Dresden, Germany. The article is more than just a walk around the building; it includes juicy details of AMD's microprocessor manufacturing process, innovations, and even has some Hammer info in it. A good read if you are interested in CPUs or simply what AMD has up their sleeve."
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AMD's Fab 30 Revealed More

AMD's Fab 30 Revealed

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  • wow (Score:2, Funny)

    by pummer ( 637413 )
    now maybe we'll see a chip at 1/2 intel clock speed but twice as fast!! (oh wait, they already have those)
    • You forgot to mention half the price as well. :)
      • testing, testing, one two three...for some reason all my posts are coming up as '1' instead of '2' like they usually do. My karma is marked excellent so wtf?! Also I noticed that the box near the bottom is marked 'no karma bonus' now, so something has definitely changed.
      • And twice the heat.. and half the stability.. :P
    • So, basically, they close their fab in Austin, lay off hundreds of Americans, and open a fab in Germany? Anyone who puts mission-critical data on an AMD platform of any kind deserves the consequences. They should keep their day job....the desktop market.

  • fab 30 (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @09:17AM (#5086992)
    i would put a joke about the fab 5, but i don't remember what the fab 5 is so fuck it.
    • That would be Fab 4, and the reference is to the Beatles.
      • The Fab 5 (at least where I'm from) is the University of Michigan basketball team from 1992 and 1993.

        Of course, thier banners have been stripped because of NCAA violations, so it's arguable how really fab they were, but I digress.

    • Re:fab 30 (Score:3, Funny)

      by yobbo ( 324595 )
      Well, i'd put in a joke about FAB, but that's a brand of washing powder, and well... who gives a fuck about washing powder...
    • The Fab 5 was when five freshman, including Chris Webber and Juwan Howard, started for Michigan's basketball team in the 1991-92 season.
    • Back in the 90's Michigan Wolverines basketball had 5 starting freshman - known as the Fab 5. They made it to the Final Four, but Webber messed it all up by calling a timeout they didnt have... Chris Webber, Juwan Howard and Jalen Rose all went on to succesful NBA careers..don't know about the other guys though. This would be a first for me, talk of sports on Slashdot!
      • The fab 5 is short for the Fabulous 5, A graffiti crew from NYC who achieved much fame during the early-to-mid eighties. It was a play on the Fab 4 name from the beatles. That's were Fab 5 freddy got his name from.

  • chipmakers vulnerable.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by YellowSubRoutine ( 230089 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @09:21AM (#5087001)
    That area flooded a few weeks ago, and I heard someone say that luckily the plant didn't get destroyed. (aparantly, a few inches of water are enough to render a silicon fab useless)

    This makes me wonder how vulnerable the chipmakers are... One good fire, flood or earthquake and we're without cpu's?
    Imagine the sabotage posibilities... (hey Intel, for 1M, I'll wipe out amd ?)

    • Re:chipmakers vulnerable.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by richteas ( 244342 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @09:53AM (#5087115)
      While it is true that Dresden is located in the valley of the river Elbe (which caused the floods you mentioned), Fab 30 is a few miles outside Dresden, well above the highest possible flood level.

      The city's infrastructure was affected though, which may have caused some trouble for the people working at Fab 30.

      http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressR oo m/0,,51_104_543~41498,00.html
      http://www.geek.com /news/geeknews/2002Aug/bch20020 816015902.htm

      However, floods and other unforeseeable events can of course cause a major ripple in the economic situation of an enterprise such as AMD. Sometimes even rumors suffice...
    • Fortunately the plants are spread out all over the world.
    • Makes you wonder why Intel thought to build a fab in Israel of all places. Talk about risk management.

    • Essensially, yes... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @10:26AM (#5087288) Homepage
      Did you remember back in 1999 when RAM prices went up, up and away, in a marked that's normally in a steady decline? That was (mostly) an earthquake in Taiwan knocking out plants.

      While the AMD fab is quite a bit away from the river, up in the hills, other natural or unnatural disasters could be pretty severe.

      However, it's not like the marked would totally collapse, AMD may have one main plant, Intel has a couple, UMC or whatever AMDs partner was called has some and I'm sure there are more flash etc. plants that could be converted on a longer timescale.

      Of course if you had coordinated gro... *stops* *pullls out his Men In Black-zapper and zaps any Al-Quida associates reading this*

      Kjella
    • The area flooded in August, not a few weeks ago (although I look out my window and yes, the Elbe is a meter or two above normal right now. It is normal for the Terrassanufer (lower street downtown) to get covered in water occassionally). Most of the flood damage was restricted to the very downtown of the city, though. I live three blocks from the river...we lost electricity for a few days but water really wasn't a problem.

      Earthquakes probably won't happen here; floods are not a great risk as the Elbe valley rises very quickly as you walk away from the river. The plant is not right at the river's edge so it will not have much trouble, I think...
    • This makes me wonder how vulnerable the chipmakers are... One good fire, flood or earthquake and we're without cpu's?
      Imagine the sabotage posibilities... (hey Intel, for 1M, I'll wipe out amd ?)

      Suppose that both Intel and AMD engineering headquarters were destroyed, either accidentally or by someone deliberately trying to cripple the US tech market. With the extreme complexity of what those companies are working on, Qhow long would it take to recover? Quite possibly it would be the end of the x86 line, period.

      There's much to be said to diversifying a bit, and not having all of our collective eggs in one basket. Yes, there are other CPUs out there, such as the PowerPC and MIPS, but think about how much we're really dependent on the x86 in so many ways.
      • You think AMD and Intel don't have about a trillion offsite backups of their chip designs? Sure, you could cripple the manufacturing, but that can be replaced relatively quickly if needed.
        • You think AMD and Intel don't have about a trillion offsite backups of their chip designs? Sure, you could cripple the manufacturing, but that can be replaced relatively quickly if needed.

          Naturally, but it's more than just that. It put either company into a deep financial hole from which it couldn't recover. It could result in the loss of the engineers who really understand how things work and where the the next gen designs are headed.
    • Intel has no more than 40% manufacturing in one area for this precise reason (of course they have enough manufacuring they can afford it). I can't speak for how AMD works it.

      Although 1 major Pacific NW Earth quake near portland (which, although not california is still an "Earthquake area" )and Bye bye Intel R&D. Of course the buildings are made to withstand 8.0 earthquakes. They were going to build stronger but found it cheaper to build a new plant in case of disaster.

  • Thank God! A story for true nerds! (Score:5, Funny)

    by wackybrit ( 321117 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @09:21AM (#5087002) Homepage Journal
    A lot of people have been worrying about the recent 'dumbification' of stories on Slashdot like exercise bike games [slashdot.org], non-existant decisions [slashdot.org] and what lawyers can learn from manga! [slashdot.org] But Harkids and Michael rush to save the day with this gruesomely geeky stuff:

    it includes juicy details of AMD's microprocessor manufacturing process

    Yes! YES! JUICY DETAILS OF PROCESSOR MANUFACTURE! YES!!

    Slashdot is SAVED!!

  • Direct link (Score:5, Informative)

    by eldimo ( 140734 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @09:22AM (#5087009)
    Direct link to the article on one single page and without ads [anandtech.com]

  • Nice to hear (Score:5, Insightful)

    by e8johan ( 605347 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @09:23AM (#5087016) Homepage Journal

    "There is one thing that's for sure; AMD has not done a very good job of telling the public exactly what they're capable of from a manufacturing standpoint. Intel has been talking about their manufacturing capabilities for quite some time now and has left the market with the impression that they are the only leader in the x86 manufacturing world. It is a shame because in reality, AMD has quite a few accomplishments of their own to talk about but it's just a matter of getting them to loosen up and let you all in."

    It is nice of AMD not to scream about what they can do in their labs, but actually rely on their current products.

    • Re:Nice to hear (Score:5, Informative)

      by sboyko ( 537649 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @09:37AM (#5087057) Homepage
      From my experience in the process control industry, this is typical of European especially German engineering. They make great products you hear very little about. We had a vendor in a while ago with some great industrial Ethernet products; they have been around for years but the first time we heard of them was by being included in a larger system. Great engineering is wonderful but you gotta sell it too!

      • Re:Nice to hear (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by jantheman ( 113125 )
        ...this is typical of European especially German engineering. They make great products you hear very little about...
        ...as opposed to US engineering, where you hear all about it, but it's not particularly great :)
        • amen to that

          actually, you can add US movies, food, fashion, music, TV, constitution, business, law and education to that, too.

          • Nice way to troll the US Constitution.
            The problem ISN'T the Constitution, it's the nitwits that the uneducated, and uncaring, masses keep electing into office...people who are looking for ways to make end runs -around- the limits placed on them by the Constitution.

            So instead of blaming the USC, blame yourself. And educate yourself about where your representatives stand on -all- this issues, not just the ones you care about.

            For the proponents of Parliamentary-style governments: Fuck off. The US has been more successful both politically and economincally under our Constitutional Republic than -ANY- of your Parliamentary systems.
            • Nice troll on your part too! Let's see: Britain has had a parlimentary system for over four hundred years now, and I'd argue that the British Empire (remember that?) was just a wee bit more successful than the US.
              • not to mention that the Romans got by pretty well without recourse to the US constitution. The funny thing about the USC is that Americans seem so enamoured by it they forgive the grotesque charade that is there political system. Any beauty in the USC is pretty quickly negated by your hereditary presidency and delightful electoral nepotism college systems. Just look at Canada, they are tremendously disadvantaged by geography compared to the US, but their parliamentary system seems to have produced a more livable society than the US'.
                • Just look at Canada, they are tremendously disadvantaged by geography compared to the US, but their parliamentary system seems to have produced a more livable society than the US'.

                  You ever think Canada's success might have more to do with the non-aggressive tendencies of the neighbor to their south, and the commensurate protections involved therein than it does with their socialist, populist parliament?
                  What is your beef with the U.S. Constitution. It's far from perfect, as is the government. However, it does effectively enable a continuous revolving revolution.
                  There is no hereditary Presidency. In fact, we've found that bastard degenarates can be President, in spite of their personal weaknesses.
                  I don't know where you find nepotism in the electoral college. Each of the seperate states has their say in how delegates are picked. The only time this changes is when the legislatures change it or, in the case of Florida, when their State Supreme Court thinks it should be a democrat.

                  Get off your high horse. It's great you've got it in for the U.S., but realize, most of us could care less. Leave us out of it and pay your bills when they're due.
                  Jackass.
              • I'd argue that the British Empire (remember that?) was just a wee bit more successful than the US.

                Really. Without the Empire (and guys like Mark Sykes) we wouldn't have Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Beirut, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
                Depends on how you measure success. Personally, I think the Empire was an abject failure seeing as it ultimately FAILED.

                The U.S., on the other hand, has no Imperial aspirations. In fact, we really couldn't care about other countries (you call it ignorance, we consider it apathy.)
                Nevertheless we have to keep going abroad and fixing your messes (see Chamberlain, Neville).

                You can get on your high horse, however, Monty Python and Black Adder are not enough to justify your imagined sense of cultural superiority.
                • Jesus that's funny. Ever watch the History channel? Yeah, it's skewed at times, but 'has no Imperial apirations'? Wow...Damnit, I had something else to say, but I lost it laughing.

      • Re:Nice to hear (Score:2, Interesting)

        by DickBreath ( 207180 )
        From my experience in the process control industry, this is typical of European especially German engineering. They make great products you hear very little about. We had a vendor in a while ago with some great industrial Ethernet products; they have been around for years but the first time we heard of them was by being included in a larger system. Great engineering is wonderful but you gotta sell it too!

        Can you say SuSE? They don't seem to make or get nearly the noise level as a certian colored item of headwear. Yet their distribution, IMHO is vastly superior.

    • Re:Nice to hear (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jarober61 ( 598836 )
      One interesting tidbit is that the FAB plant is what kind of software runs the FAB. Not C, not Java - Smalltalk. For those who didn't think Smalltalk was capable of real time operations (the TI fab plants also run on Smalltalk).
    • Back when Intel just released early 75Mhz and 100Mhz Pentiums, Alpha with their advanced CMOS process was pushing 600Mhz on RISC chips.

      Nobody bought it.

      Their sales people couldn't convince consumers that superior technology was worth the price. They generated no excitement! They hoped that the technology could speak for itself.

      I've been told by a long time Alpha engineer that long time clients would call him directly asking about new products, bypassing the sales rep. At the same time Sun sales team was attacking like wolves and stole the high end server market.

      The result is that Intel now owns most of Alpha technology including the engineering teams. The last Alpha EV7 system can do up to 256 MP, and 256GB RAM, all on high speed ultra-wide packet switched interconnect bus. HP has to play down its performance to justify moving to Itanium servers.

      The first Itanium has problems with more than 4 MP. Thank you Mr. Capellas.

  • That's some scary stuff... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JakiChan ( 141719 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @09:27AM (#5087027)
    I once did a gig at someone who manufactured fab equipment, and we all had to take this 3-day safety course, even those of us just working in the server room. And mostly it was 3-days of "This is chemical [insert name here] and it will kill you in [insert time here]. The way you will horribly die is [insert pain here]. So be careful." They made it sound like the room was full of gas that would eat you alive like that stuff from The Rock.

    Intel may have tried to make the guys in the bunny suits cute, but after learning some of the dangerous stuff they're around I came to respect them for sure.
    • we all had to take this 3-day safety course

      3 days? That's it? When I worked for TI it was a full week... and you had to retake the course yearly.

      You're not kidding about the chemicals though... nobody was allowed to wear contacts in the fabs where I worked because they used a chemical with the tradename Pirhana. It was used beneath the floor in the air cleaners, but if it ever backblasted then it would melt plastic - and thus your contacts to your eyes.

      Realistically, fabs are incredibly safe as far as chemicals go. They have to be because of the incredibly nasty shit being used. You're much, much more likely to fall 20' onto concrete through an open floor tile then you are to get exposed to a dangerous chemical.
      • 3 days? That's it? When I worked for TI it was a full week... and you had to retake the course yearly

        Well, this was the class for folks who wouldn't be on the fab floor - and they still had to tell us all about that death stuff!

        The one cool thing was that I learned how to read those diamond signs with the red, yellow, and blue. That's pretty cool.
        • Yeah... I did equipment automation, so we had to go in the fab every once in awhile... plus the building I worked at was attached to 3 operational fabs, so a bit higher risk than a equip manufacturer's system room (although I know most manu's have a mini clean room for manufacturing, testing, and demo).

          I don't recall the diamond sign bit... must've slept through that part :)

          And I meant the statement you quoted as a bit more tongue in cheek than it came across.
      • Zathrus commented
        Realistically, fabs are incredibly safe as far as chemicals go.

        I'm remembering when I was working at an HP building that had some sort of chip etching facilities in it. I think that it was not for manufacturing, but for design (Corvallis, OR). Nonetheless, we were evacuated four times in one week because the chemical alarms went off. It turned out that the dumping station for the janitors' chemicals was situated in such a way that the air intake system for the fab area was sucking in the fumes from the cleaning chemicals and circulating throughout the air system! *Gulp* Even though it was not the dangerous chems causing the alarms, I had nightmares about my bones rotting away from the insides for days.

    • Google search for SCARY HF burns [google.com]

      I work at a fab now (that shall remain nameless), and one of the nastiest liquids we have around here is HF (Hydrofluoric acid). The stuff has a NASTY desire for the calcium in your bones.

      • I work at a fab now (that shall remain nameless), and one of the nastiest liquids we have around here is HF (Hydrofluoric acid). The stuff has a NASTY desire for the calcium in your bones.

        Yeah, that's the one that put the fear of God in to me. Not only does it mess up the calcium in your bones, but it also messes up the calcium in your heart tissue, And it takes just a relatively tiny amount on your skin to croak you...or at least that's what I saw on ER...

      • HF can easily penatrate rubber gloves becuase of its size. And you're right, F has a huge affinity to replace Ca in your bones. This can lead to catastrophic failure of the bone under normal loading (your muscle twitches). Now, doesn't this make toothpaste sound scary (most tooth paste has NaF (sodium Fluride).

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by GigsVT ( 208848 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @09:27AM (#5087028) Journal
    Intel recently scrapped plans to firebomb the AMD Fab30 plant. When reached for comment an Intel spokesman said "The war for the desktop processor market is mostly over." AMD has declined to comment.

  • Sure is a cheap fab (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sboyko ( 537649 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @09:30AM (#5087037) Homepage

    The combination of the Fab and the Dresden Design Center (DDC) was said to require a $2.3 million investment, with close to $2M already spent...

    At that price, any Tom Dick or Harriet could set one up!

    Of course, the next sentence makes it clear they're talking BILLIONS, not millions:

    and the remaining $300M due to be used by the end of 2003. For an advanced microprocessor fabrication facility like Fab 30 this is the going rate for start-up costs, which is a major part of the reason why there are only two big competitors in the desktop CPU market; with such high barriers to entry, it's very difficult to become a mass market competitor in the CPU business.

    • Re:Sure is a cheap fab (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      In german language "M" is used also (more common is Mrd.) as an abbreviation for "Milliarde" which is "billion", not exclusively for million.

      Probably thats where the confusion derives from.

  • slashdot math (Score:3, Funny)

    by ortholattice ( 175065 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @09:36AM (#5087052)
    From the article: The combination of the Fab and the Dresden Design Center (DDC) was said to require a $2.3 million investment, with close to $2M already spent and the remaining $300M due to be used by the end of 2003.

    By any chance were the /. editors on this tour?

    (BTW here's a tip: Click on "Print this article" to see the whole article at once, ad-free, without having to wait for 7 pages of ads to download.)

    • Click on "Print this article" to see the whole article at once, ad-free, without having to wait for 7 pages of ads to download.

      And cheat the advertisers of their pound of flesh? Get rid of the adverisers and the alterntive is pay-per-view.

      It doesn't cost look at the ads.

      I'll bet the "skip commercial" button on your VCR remote is worn to a nub.

      • I'll bet the "skip commercial" button on your VCR remote is worn to a nub.

        it sure as hell is! and when i rip/encode dvd's to vcd i don't include any of the previews at all. and when i back up my vhs tapes i skip those too! bad consumer.. bad..

        and my linux satelite tv software descrambler ensures that pay-per-view comes across quite nicely :). after all, i didn't ask them to send that signal onto my property!

        they have a "print article" button for people to use. I don't think there's an EULA you have to click through to agree that you will actually print the article and not just read it thouroughly to avoid the cumbersome advertisements and even if there were, and it stood up as being legitimite in the highest and most ethical court in the land, does that make it moral?

  • Fab 30? (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @09:43AM (#5087078) Homepage Journal

    John, Paul, Ringo, George.. who are the other 26?
  • From when did it get juicy, CPU manufacturing process?

  • Check out the article on Hardware Analysis (Score:3, Informative)

    by hama ( 515936 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @10:18AM (#5087247)
    FYI, Hardware Analysis has an article on the AMD Dresden plant. They were invited to an AMD Media Workshop there.

    http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/15 80/ [hardwareanalysis.com]

    A bit short but they've got two pictures of the plant.

    - hama -

  • The most important part of the article... (Score:3, Informative)

    by secondsun ( 195377 ) <secondsun@gmail.com> on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @10:38AM (#5087345) Journal
    ... is that the Hammer is being mass produced and is actually going to ship!
  • It says in the artical: "While both AMD and Intel are working towards introducing Fully Depleted SOI in a matter of years, only AMD is introducing PD-SOI."
    I thought that the Prescott was going to be released on SOI, though maybe I got that mixed up with strained silicon.
    Anybody know?
  • It seems to me that purchasing the Alpha would be a great deal for AMD. They are already in a position to design and manufacture it.

    In addition, many still depend on the Alpha, and this would give AMD the server market it's always wanted, and has been trying to secure.

    All this is not mentioning that the Alpha's perfomance has always been far better than x86. Just imagine what would happen if AMD came out with a 8GHz processor a year from now...

    Just a little ranting from someone who does not want to see the Alpha go, and still remembers the potential they hold.
    • "It seems to me that purchasing the Alpha would be a great deal for AMD. They are already in a position to design and manufacture it.

      In addition, many still depend on the Alpha, and this would give AMD the server market it's always wanted, and has been trying to secure.

      All this is not mentioning that the Alpha's perfomance has always been far better than x86. Just imagine what would happen if AMD came out with a 8GHz processor a year from now..."

      I think the problem with this is that Intel bought most of the Alpha engineers, from Compaq, before HP bought Compaq (or however that deal worked...) so AMD would have to do some serious work to get those people. However, from my understanding (and I may be completely wrong) Hammer is basically a RISC CPU that does CISCy x86 stuff. While this isn't new (I think as far back as 286 or 386) this has been what the chips looked like, translating the CISC code into mo-betta RISC code for the CPU to run through.

      While the RISC architechture of Hammer is exciting (and hopefully a little easier to program for), I think the more exciting prospect is that of HyperTransport and what it will mean for bandwidth inside the system (as well as allowing for 'glueless' multiprocessing). Then again, when I mention that I find HyperTransport more interesting than Hammer, most people get a certain look on their face, one that says "You... suck." But I'm still excited about it. :-)
    • Yes, they have a lot of Digital's former design team.

      A lot of people would love to see Alpha continue, but this would be a issue for HPaq/Intel who have a lot of the rights at the moment and wish to drive high end customers in the direction of Itanium.

      I guess developing a new Alpha isn't easy because of the diversion of resouces away from x86. It doesn't sell the numbers associated with x86 so it would take longer to pay for itself. AMD has already spent a bundle on Hammer, so I can't see them wanting to change their direction and although Alpha was an engineer's dream, it was a marketing disaster.

      • It doesn't sell the numbers associated with x86 so it would take longer to pay for itself.

        Well, it has a higher margin than ia32, and how popular Hammer will be remains to be seen... It could well be that Alpha will be a better seller than Hammer. With Alpha, they would already have an installed base, and a guaranteed market. Not to mention that the Alpha has already shown that it can be several times faster than Intel, which would be a huge advantage.
        • Yes, but what do run on it, just Linux? HP 'owns' VMS and the dying Tru64. HP will be pushing VMS onto Itanium and will not be interested in keeping the Alpha users happy a moment lpnger than necessary. Microsoft dropped support for the Alpha from NT. Unless you develop your own apps, there isn't a lot of stuff that will run on an Alpha these days.

          Alpha was great but unlike SPARC, it never had the numbers to get a low price for the high-end corporate workstation market. With better market saturation, it would have been a clear winner. At Digital, they had a saying "Digital make watches, don't they?" because of the poor efforts at corporate marketing. The Suns people were buying for the desktop were crap and badly engineered (lots of daughter boards, reducing reliability). However, people thought that the Suns were fast. Solaris was also not exactly easy to use (it has got better) and had a lot of problems whilst OpenVMS and Tru64 were boring (they worked). You bought 50 Sun workstations, then you went out and bought a Sun server or two to go with it. Sun didn't even have proper clustering in those days and failover was something you more or less had to do yourself. However, those Sun UltraSparcs were dirt cheap (low margin).

          Alpha is nice, but I believe that Compaq and now HP have blown it through not understanding what they have. AMD believes that Hammer will be supported by Microsoft, so they have a market there.

          • Yes, but what do run on it, just Linux? HP 'owns' VMS and the dying Tru64. HP will be pushing VMS onto Itanium and will not be interested in keeping the Alpha users happy a moment lpnger than necessary. Microsoft dropped support for the Alpha from NT.

            Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD... It sounds like AMD could get the rights to Tru64/DigitalUnix very cheap too. In addition, Windows 2000 is available for Alpha, so I wouldn't say they've dropped support.
            • Does Win 2K run on Alpha, I heard that the support was dropped in NT4.0?

              If HPaq are so dedicated towards Itanium, I can't see them wanting to let it go in the form where it may become a competitor to them. They may sell the hardware but would they sell Tru64? What commercial sense would there be for AMD to go for a chip that only will be supported by Open Source software. It would be nice, but very brave!

              I would like it. I have an Alpha at home (running OpenVMS) and have written for Alphas in C, Fortran and COBOL and Bliss. My biggest client is still running Alphas for the server part of their application. Regrettably, they killed off the Alpha clients due to poor management of the development process and the low level of interest by their cutomers (who wanted Sparcs and Windoze, the latter because of the commodity cost of the platform).

  • AMD's Fab 30, Simply Fabulous
    http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/15 81/ [hardwareanalysis.com]

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