Digital Equipment Corp has maintained since before its introduction that the Alpha RISC is capable of running at speeds in excess of 1GHz – 1,000MHz – and now the company reportedly plans to describe just such as part at a conference next month. It plans to start using it in systems in the second half next year. It also says Mitsubishi Electric Corp engineers are working with designers at the DEC chip shop in Hudson, Massachusetts on the $400 version of the Alpha, which could be used in personal computers costing as little as $2,500. The cheapest Alpha is now $700. Meantime, DEC is apparently figuring its prospective 21264 Alpha chip, aka EV6, will be good for 30 SPECint, the EV67 shrink for 50 SPECint and the EV7 for 100 SPECint. It’s also supposed to be working with LSI Logic Corp on a chipset called Koala.
