DEC says its new 612MHz Alpha 21164 RISC chip used in those new AlphaServers (CI No 3,257), performs 18.4 SPECint95 and 20.8 SPECfp95. The AlphaServer 8200 accommodates six processors and 12Gb RAM. The 8400 supports 14 CPUs and 28Gb RAM. DEC claims the forthcoming six layer metal EV6 part, 21264, which is slated to debut in the AlphaServer 8000s around year-end at between 500MHz and 600MHz, will deliver twice the performance of the 21164 at the same clock speed. It’s got DEC Unix booted on a motherboard reportedly code-named Monet and destined for workstations. The new Memory Channel 2.0 interconnect DEC is using to ties servers together in clusters operates at 95Mb per second – the new hub has six channels and supports eight nodes. Latency is down to 2.1 microseconds. Copper connections between nodes extend to 10m. A copper-fiber connection extends to 3km. DEC will include a key clustered file system – which it demo’d at CeBit last spring – in a new release of the TruCluster software next year. DEC claims 2,500 customers using its various flavors of clustering. The sweet spot is three to four nodes with six or eight processors and 6Gb to 8Gb RAM per node.
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