DEC Alpha/Intel melding blurs RISC/CISC borders

Electronic News, April 26, 1993 by Craig Stedman

MAYNARD, MASS.--Digital Equipment Corp. further blurred distinctions between RISC and CISC systems by revealing plans to combine Alpha AXP workstation and PC hardware into a platform built around Intel's Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) local bus.

The first PCI machines, running Windows NT in addition to the OpenVMS and DEC OSF/1, are due in 1994 and will be based on second-generation Alpha microprocessors. They are scheduled over time to replace the initial Alpha workstation platforms DEC is shipping with its own Turbochannel I/O interconnect technology.

"In the long term, PCI is going to be the bus of the future for the desktop," said Andy Feit, DEC's workstation marketing manager. "But it's going to be a long cutover. It will be a good couple of years before we see a switchover and PCI overtakes Turbochannel."

Mr. Feit said two more Turbochannel hardware generations are planned to take those machines "well into 1994 and even 1995" and DEC will give customers a choice based on what peripheral devices desired.

The transition could be accelerated if PCI--initially portrayed as a companion bus for Pentium systems, themselves seen as contributors to the shifting of RISC-CISC boundaries--can bridge to other buses as promised. This would allow Turbochannel devices to work on PCI hardware--a strategy Mr. Feit said DEC is exploring. "If it works well, we'll move quicker" to PCI, he said.

An original PCI backer, DEC, nevertheless, evaluated the rival VL-Bus designed by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA). The Intel bus was chosen because of the bridging capability and it can run in full 64-bit mode matching Alpha's 64-bit nature. The company expects to get throughput of up to 267Mbps on the PCI bus, compared to Turbochannel's 100Mbps limit. On the PC side, PCI would replace the EISA bus, which DEC is using in the initial Alpha/NT deskside system scheduled for introduction next month.

The combined platforms would likely be DEC's first workstation-class machines to run NT. "We feel that's the point where workstations and PCs do in fact truly merge," Mr. Feit said, adding there are no plans for NT on current Turbochannel systems.

PCI machines are expected to be based on the second-generation EV-5 Alpha design--scheduled to be qualified for manufacturing this year. DEC has said it will produce 0.5-micron devices with four million transistors and clock rates of up to 275MHz.

DEC's PC business unit is also a proponent of PCI eventual use with its x86-based models. It demonstrated PCI with Intel at the recent CeBIT show and thinks it "offers the best route for the future," said director of marketing Roger Matus.

DEC last week also filled out its initial Alpha workstation line by adding its first models below $15,000 and a high-end 200MHz machine rated at 160.8Specmarks.

With a fuller offering and the recent shipment of DEC OSF/1, DEC wants to reassert itself in workstations after losing ground to its rivals in recent years. DEC's primary target is market leader Sun Microsystems, which has gained the most from its lapses. A trade-in credit of $2,000 to $10,000 is now being offered on Sun machines, and a similar program will probably be aimed at HP accounts starting in July. About 450 OpenVMS and 100 DEC OSF/1 application programs are available at this time.

DEC also introduced basic clustering tools for connecting Alpha workstations into parallel processing "farms" and released R4000 and R4400 upgrades for its MIPS-based DECstation line.