Powerhouse 7.10/8.30 VMS upgrade (survey results - sort of)

[Chris Sharman]

Alpha isn't much like VAX.
The relationship is that DEC wrote a "compiler" for VAX assembler, so that
all the VMS source code could be compiled for Alpha. They then tweaked what
needed it. The port to Alpha went very smoothly, and bodes well for the port
to Itanium.
There's no hardware compatibility between Alpha and VAX.

Alpha, however, is a stable, fast, production 64 bit CPU. At the time it was
canned, its projected performance took it well ahead of Itanium's - and
Itanium development was sliding so badly it looked unlikely to threaten
Alpha. Canning it was an insane decision - a production chip capable of
running VMS, Unix, and Windows NT.

Chris

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Witkopp, Richard [mailto:richard.witkopp@idt.com]
> Sent: 21 August 2002 19:16
> To: powerh-l@lists.swau.edu
> Subject: RE: Powerhouse 7.10/8.30 VMS upgrade (survey results - sort of)
>
>
> It can't be that much of a snap - they've been working
> on it for over a year.
>
> I can't see where the microcode of the Itanium (which is
> supposed to have a migration path from x86) would be much
> like the Alpha (which has a migration path from VAX).
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Pickering, John (NORBORD) [mailto:PICKERIJ@norbord.com]
> > Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2002 11:01 AM
> > To: 'PowerHouse List (E-mail)'
> > Cc: Witkopp, Richard
> > Subject: RE: Powerhouse 7.10/8.30 VMS upgrade (survey results
> > - sort of)
>
> > It has also
> > been suggested that the port of OpenVMS to IA64 isn't such a
> > big deal since
> > most of the tough grunt work was done moving from VAX to Alpha.
>
>
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> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------------
> Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 11:09:47 -0700
>



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