Re:How much better was DEC Alpha than contemporary x86?
by zlynx on Sunday February 09, 2020 @02:23PM
(#22283800)
I bet the Office software was riddled with C++ undefined behavior. The Alpha was one of the closest CPUs to the mythical Deathstation 9000 which will destroy you if you make even one mistake in your code.
Like Itanium, compiling for Alpha with -O3 would expose you to large amounts of bugs in your code and bugs in the compiler too.
Re:How much better was DEC Alpha than contemporary x86?
by stuartc842 on Sunday February 09, 2020 @02:03PM
(#22283697)
>turns out the Office team had a single Alpha in their pipeline, set to compile -O0, and pretty much said "this is there to check the lawsuit checkmark"
what does this mean? compile -O0? lawsuit checkmark?
Re:How much better was DEC Alpha than contemporary x86?
by detaro on Sunday February 09, 2020 @02:05PM
(#22283712)
-O0 means compiling without optimization. Presumably they were contractually required to have a version Office for Alpha, so they did the minimum effort thing to produce one.
Re:How much better was DEC Alpha than contemporary x86?
by mega_dingus on Sunday February 09, 2020 @02:36PM
(#22283878)
Exactly this
Corporate infighting, incompetent sales, and misaligned vision pervaded the culture. It didn't help that PPro came out of left field and took everybody by surprise
When I interviewed at Intel in '95, they were absolutely giddy with how they stole Alpha's thunder. DEC was a better geographic choice for me, and, well...
HP didn't come into the picture until long after - DEC sold to Compaq in '98, Compaq to HP in '02. The race was over at least 7 years before that.
Edit: Not to mention the absolutely hostile stance DEC took to MS wrt NT. Due to Cutler's involvement with NT, DEC sued MSFT and somehow thought that would make MSFT become a loyal partner.
I remember Office 97 performing terribly on Alpha. We sent a compiler guy there to figure out why; turns out the Office team had a single Alpha in their pipeline, set to compile -O0, and pretty much said "this is there to check the lawsuit checkmark"