Hi All ! Question about Athlon EV6 Bus Protocol

[Benedikt]

Hi all,

- First of all, excuse me for my poor english as i am from Austria -

I am overwhelmed by the accuracy of some technical infos here and i hope i can contribute as much as that i am learning of all you.

I have a question about the Athlon EV6 Bus. As the Athlons uses the same (?) bus as the Compaq Alpha 21264, would it be possible to use Athlon Chipsets for Alphas? I know, the sockets are not compatible, but theoretically, would it be possible? I think the Athlon uses a 64 bit bus width, as the Alpha.
Would be cool to see some adaptors to use Alphas with the 760MPX.

Thanks in advance.

B. Winkelmayer

 

[CTho9305]

The different instruction set would be an issue. The BIOS sends x86 instructions - I don't think an Alpha would take that very well

 

[Locutus4657]

Yes it is possible and yes it is done. I don't know about the 760MPX, but I know you can find 750 and 760 (uni-proc) "Slot B" MB's if you scour the internet long enough. Unfortunetly it's just about impossible to find anything Alpha these day's with Compaq having officially pulled the plug (foolishly).

Carlo



<< Hi all,

- First of all, excuse me for my poor english as i am from Austria -

I am overwhelmed by the accuracy of some technical infos here and i hope i can contribute as much as that i am learning of all you.

I have a question about the Athlon EV6 Bus. As the Athlons uses the same (?) bus as the Compaq Alpha 21264, would it be possible to use Athlon Chipsets for Alphas? I know, the sockets are not compatible, but theoretically, would it be possible? I think the Athlon uses a 64 bit bus width, as the Alpha.
Would be cool to see some adaptors to use Alphas with the 760MPX.

Thanks in advance.

B. Winkelmayer >>

 

[Locutus4657]

The instruction set is not an issue with a chipset, and BIOS's are not built into the chipset. I know for a fact that all of AMD's uni-proc chipsets are available on Alpha MB's and as a matter of fact, I have heard that this issue is specifically addressed in AMD's licenceing of the BUS, that all AMD chipsets would also be available for Alpha CPU's. Unfortunetly since Compaq made the decicition to kill the Alpha, it means little now.

Carlo



<< The different instruction set would be an issue. The BIOS sends x86 instructions - I don't think an Alpha would take that very well >>

 

[CTho9305]

this article says:


<< Future K7 and 21264 processors will come in SEC-like cartridges that fit Slot A. With a BIOS upgrade, the same motherboard could work with either a K7 or a 21264. >>



its an old article, but still interesting.

edit: it doesn't look like a 21264 is all that fast compared to much cheaper athlons. here is a comparison. if a 466mhz alpha ~= 1ghz athlon (i assumed linear increases), then a 667mhz alpha would approximately equal a 1.4ghz athlon (this is in the tests where the alpha is STRONGEST). However, athlons have now moved to DDR memory and on-die cache. I can't find a price for an alpha, but I doubt it is cheaper than a faster athlon. and newer alphas don't use EV6, IIRC.

 

[Benedikt]

Do you get Alpha processors somewhere, or do you have to buy a complete Alpha system? BTW, I too think it's sad, that the Alpha will die; because it's faster than Itanium.

 

[MustPost]

prob with alphas, even though they were insanely powerful. Once you get more than 8 definatly after 16 of them they aren't as good.
Sun Chips are the master at scalling up with many procs. How about a 72 processor Sun computer. No Alpha setup could been that.
Of course the new IBM Power4 chips, IBM is claiming they can scale very were, be more powerful they anything Sun has, and stay in the same, if not cheaper price range. And IBM was doing there tests using a java thing.

 

[CTho9305]

<< prob with alphas, even though they were insanely powerful. Once you get more than 8 definatly after 16 of them they aren't as good.
Sun Chips are the master at scalling up with many procs. How about a 72 processor Sun computer. No Alpha setup could been that.
Of course the new IBM Power4 chips, IBM is claiming they can scale very were, be more powerful they anything Sun has, and stay in the same, if not cheaper price range. And IBM was doing there tests using a java thing. >>


the terascale supercomputer here is a whole bunch of multi-proc alphas, IIRC.