The latest take of the roadmap for Compaq Computer Corp’s Alpha RISC, as previewed by Shannon Knows Compaq, suggests Samsung’s 0.25 micron shrink of the current EV6 21264 is currently reckoned to be at 667MHz and will ship as a 700MHz part in the TurboLaser servers and 767MHz engine in Compaq’s forthcoming WildFire line. It’s estimated to perform 36 SPECint95 and 70 SPECfp95 at 667MHz. EV68, pin-compatible with EV6, is supposed to reach 833MHz by year-end and be ready for deployment next year as a 1GHz part performing 65 SPECint95 and 95 SPECfp95.
Meantime, the fourth-generation 21364 EV7 which uses the EV6 core with on-board L2 cache and support logic. It effectively enables the creation of glueless SMP/NUMA systems, supports Rambus and lockstepping for the Tandem NonStop Kernel. Now reckoned to be ready late next year, it is estimated to be worth 80 SPECint95 and 130 SPECfp95 at 1GHz and is seen as a Merced competitor. Arana or EV8, the fifth generation architecture is due late 2001 and is seen as a McKinley competitor. Supporting symmetric multithreading, it is estimated to be worth 200 SPECint95 and 300SPECfp95 operating at 1.2GHz to 1.4GHz. Development of EV9 and EV10 are well underway.
As well as building out the AlphaServer line with 21264, Compaq says it will also add Alpha models to the Intel-based ProLiant series. Compaq thinks that by fitting 500MHz EV6 parts to a two- way ‘Catamaran’ and four-way ‘Schooner’ ProLiant servers it can supercharge database performance on NT. It says it plans to develop system components including memory and disks that can be used by both lines of servers in much the same way IBM uses common components in RS/6000 and AS/400.
The next-generation WildFire servers, likely to be around by year-end, link switched nodes through a global hierarchical switch. As already reported, the 256-CPU design point will be reached in stages with an initial 16-way release followed by 32- way systems, 70-120 CPU capability before 256-ways. The idea is that upgrades can be seamless and across the line with 288Gb and 14 PCI buses supported at the high-end. Reportedly one-to-four way building blocks will provide 2Gbps switched CPU/memory connection per processor and 4Gb RAM per CPU board and PCI buses per building block.
