Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 09:05:46 -0400 From: "Paul V. Bolotoff" <walter@alasir.com> To: alpha@freebsd.org Subject: Re: HEADSUP: Alpha support is being retired in 7.0 Message-ID: <E1FfzFC-0008OE-Fl@webmail03.yourhostingaccount.com>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
I'm afraid that's a hoax. The Chinese have placed their bets on the MIPS architecture (search for Godson and Godson-2 processors by BLX IC Design). I see no reason why they should support another RISC architecture. By the way, AMD cooperates closely with BLX since 2003 (they have established a development centre in Beijing). PVB On Mon, 15 May 2006 16:56 , 'Rafael Ruiz' <gandano@gmail.com> sent: >Hi! >In this paper says that Chinese military works on their own cloned Alpha EV8 / EV9 >processors, and they running COSIX (Chinese Tru64 UNIX whose source code Compaq >gave to the China sometime ago, plus EV8 etc plans that might have >leaked out of the US). > >Please, see http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=4266 > >Rafa > >2006/5/15, Paul V. Bolotoff < >walter@alasir.com>:That's sad very much. However, the architecture may be revived sooner or later. The instruction set is free, and most original patents of DEC are expired by this moment. Thanks to DEC, the architecture and its hardware implementations are well-documented. There are open-source operating systems, compilers, assemblers and other development tools available, so it's a matter of time for some enterprise to pick everything up and blow a new life into the architecture. We'll see what we shall see. > > >By the way, the Alpha processors have never had integer division implemented in hardware. Not a drawback though, because it's a relatively complicated instruction. It takes an advanced computational logic and dozens of cycles to complete execution anyway (about one bit per clock cycle). To throw an example in, Athlon64-family processors can do that in 42 cycles for 32-bit operands or in 74 cycles for 64-bit ones. Finally, it isn't an easy task for hardware engineers to get it pipelined properly... > > >PVB > >-- >-- > >Rafa. > >Alpha back to life.
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?E1FfzFC-0008OE-Fl>