Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 17:30:00 -0500 (CDT) From: James Nuckolls <jamesn@what.net> To: <mjacob@feral.com>, freebsd-alpha@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Compaq's alpha unit being sold (off-topic) Message-ID: <200106252230.f5PMTx788105@jamesnt.iadfw.net> In-Reply-To: <20010625140615.L3157-100000@wonky.feral.com> References: <20010625140615.L3157-100000@wonky.feral.com>
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In mailinglist.freebsd.alpha, you wrote: > It'll be interesting. Since some large government labs have predicated their > supercomputing clusters on EV8, we'll see what they have to say about it. I thought about the same earlier in the weekend. > I'm just noting that with the death of any serious corporate backing for > servers for Alpha, the only thing left that could be taken seriously as a I think this may be the fatal flaw in your argument, that is assuming there's been serious corporate backing for the Alpha at any point in the last 5 years. Let's face it, DEC was closer to death than anyone really wants to admit. Further, just given how Compaq has been marketing themselves to even current Alpha customers has given, at least, me the impression that not only were they never really all that committed to the Alpha, but it's also pretty clear that they don't even understand the Alpha and why it worked so well for DEC for so long. The not understanding part is pretty easy and can be summed up in one word: Linux. Compaq has spent every waking moment since discovering that they really did own the Alpha trying to position it as a faster Linux (than that copy of Red Hat you've got installed on your LETNi machine). Digital mortgage their future on the Alpha because they saw the processor as more of a platform to provide stability and scalability via VMS and Digital UNIX on a platform they not only control, but write the compiler for. With that in mind, I really don't see OSF (Digital UNIX) as a viable solution when the Alpha is abandoned in favor of IA-64, which is exactly why Dec abandoned the OSF port to IA-64 in the first place. You have to ask yourself a question: Why would I but a Compaq branded IA-64 box in favor of any number of cheeper operating systems with will probably work just as well? The answer is, I wouldn't. VMS, on the other hand probably is just as viable on IA-64 as it is on Alpha. (Reference: VMS/MIPS -> OpenVMS) > server alternative to Intel is the UltraSparc platforms, and that's unlikely Tell that to IBM and Apple. I think you'll see both companies be a bit more forceful with their positioning in the large server market. Which is a good thing, as I'd be more than happy to buy a large Apple PPC based servers when I can't buy Alphas anymore. > to be a win for Open Source here either as there's less support in Sun than > there was inside DEQ for Open Source. Oh well. So, you're arguing that Open Source works better when there's more platforms to port your OS to? I'm not sure I agree. Just on the surface, I'd say that's it's somewhat easier since you know who your friends are, and what they are trying to hide. You are also assuming that Intel is like Microsoft. In several ways they are (take a very close look at this agreement) but they really aren't that interested in controlling what software you run. Further, Intel realized a while ago that Microsoft isn't the only game in town and really has almost no standing in the large server market. Linux is the BSDs are far more important in this segment and Intel knows this. [1] Though it generally is, but only because Dec never could get away with the kinds of crap that LETNi does. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message
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