Alpha Processor Inc, the new unit of Samsung Electronics Co devoted to the promotion and development of the Alpha microprocessor architecture, had its coming out party in New York Tuesday. As expected, partners Compaq Computer Corp and Microsoft Corp were on hand to show their support for the new company. API, as the new company is referred to, is convinced that with the support it has received thus far, it can successfully drive Alpha into the 64-bit Windows NT market. Compaq, for its part, reiterated its commitment to its newly-acquired technology and promised Compaq-branded servers and workstations built with Alpha in the near future. The company reckons that Alpha will enable it to be the leading vendor supporting the 64-bit capabilities of Windows NT 5.0 when it becomes available. Microsoft said it plans to provide complete operating system and development support for Alpha at parity with any other microprocessor. Jim Allchin, senior vice president at Microsoft, said that the company was pleased with the new venture and with Compaq’s acquisition of Digital Equipment Corp and that it felt the combined efforts of the partners would insure that Alpha would remain a serious platform for Windows NT and BackOffice. Allchin assured the gathering that NT 5.0 would run on both Alpha and Intel Corp’s Merced and that it would include certain APIs written just for Alpha. He said NT Server Enterprise Edition 5.0 will support large physical memories on Alpha-based servers, to enhancing data warehousing, OLTP and scientific workload performance. Microsoft also reaffirmed its commitment to providing native Alpha versions of key server applications, such as Exchange and SQL Server. Allchin said Microsoft was also working on X86-to-Alpha instructions to run key 32-bit IA-32 applications without modification. No further word was given on when NT 5.0 would be released. Boston-based Alpha Processor Inc has taken staff from Samsung, DEC and other firms. It describes itself as a fabless US company whose mission is to market Alpha-based processors, chipsets and motherboards into the high-volume enterprise market. Samsung first announced in February that it had struck a deal with DEC for the Alpha architectural license and said then that it would create a subsidiary devoted to the platform. Dr Daeje Chin will continue to serve as executive vice president and CEO of Samsung’s System LSI Group and API’s new CEO.
