DEC reminds us it has been shipping an eight-way Windows NT Alpha server, AlphaServer 8400 TurboLaser with 440 MHz chips, since last October (CI No 3,336). It goes to 8Mb RAM and 48 PCI slots. The Unix and OpenVMS TurboLasers currently house up to 14 625MHz Alphas, 28Gb RAM and 144 PCI slots. Higher up the food chain – but still some way off – DEC’s ccNUMA distributed shared memory offerings will encompass the re-badged Intel NUMA-Q servers from new Unix partner Sequent Computer Inc and its own 32-way 21264 Wildfire server with Unix, followed by NT. Ultimately it would like to enable users to dynamically partition Open VMS, NT and Unix within a node much like Sequent’s existing Unix and NT under-one-hood technology. DEC’s Alpha 21264 introduction is just around the corner. Performance will be twice that of the 21164 at the same clock frequency.
