Digital Equipment Corp, Samsung Electronics Co and Mitsubishi Electric Co are attempting to give DEC’s Alpha RISC chip a higher profile through a jointly sponsored, multi-million dollar branding and marketing campaign called AlphaPowered. The effort, launched at PC Expo this week and initially US-focused, will encompass print and online advertising, trade shows, and AlphaPowered web site, press activities and co-operative marketing with Alpha systems vendors. The big prize would be to expand awareness and demand for Alpha systems running Windows NT in the performance-PC market sector. DEC claims Alpha systems can run twice as fast as Intel x86-based systems, and so are particularly suited for personal computer users running applications with a heavy multimedia content. Samsung believes that of 40 million projected Windows NT sales in the year 2000, between 20% and 30% will be in the visual computing segment. Intel, however has noticed the same thing, and is pushing its own visual connected PC initiative (CI No 3,137). The web site has a list of more than 2,500 native Windows applications for Alpha and 29 vendors using the chip for hardware products, along with information about running non-native applications via DEC’s FX!32 translator. Systems from Alpha licensees begin sporting a new AlphaPowered brand logo from this summer.
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