Alpha Comes Out of the Closet at New York City's PC Expo

(c) 1997 By Terry Shannon, Publisher, Shannon Knows DEC

With great fanfare and an equal number of decibels, DEC and its Alpha partners came to the Javits Center at New York City to kick off a high-profile, multifaceted AlphaPowered marketing campaign. By all indications, Alpha's first foray into an Intel-centric consumer PC show was a success: despite its less than ideal location on the trade show floor, the AlphaPowered booth drew a great deal of traffic, enabling DEC, Mitsubishi, Samsung, and a handful of Alpha OEMs to put forth the proposition that there are three types of performance-conscious Windows users: people who use Alpha, people who wish they used Alpha, and people who just don't know any better.

Given the relatively low level of end-user awareness of Alpha, the initial goal of the campaign was to educate the group of people who missed the Alpha chapter of Computer Literacy 101. The initial effort generated positive results.

As previously discussed (see "An Alpha Powered Effort to Jumpstart 21164PC Sales," SKD V4N12, June 16, 1997), the AlphaPowered campaign will cost Digital, Mitsubishi, and Samsung an estimated $8M to $10M during its first year. The firms plan to equally split the costs, which cover advertising and co-op money for Alpha OEMs who include the AlphaPowered logo in their ads. The "Alpha-Inside" campaign is dwarfed by Intel's ongoing and ubiquitous Intel-Inside marketing effort: Intel will spend close to $1B this year on advertising and co-op programs that fuel demand for Pentium chips. One casualty of the new campaign is Digital's incumbent and seemingly ineffectual "AlphaGeneration" cooperative marketing program.

Coming Soon to a Desktop Near You

The AlphaPowered campaign lays the groundwork for Alpha PCs at Pentium prices. 21164PC-based systems from Alpha OEMs--and Digital itself--are just around the corner. In the interim, low-cost Alpha desktops are available from the nearly 30 OEMS who have bellied up to the 64-bit AlphaPowered bar.

At PC Expo, Alpha OEMs DeskStation Technology, Enorex, and Polywell Computers were among the DEC partners displaying Alpha econoboxes. DeskStation Technology Inc. showed off its latest Alpha-inside offering, the Ruffian RPX workstation. The new system can be used as either a workstation or a server and is based on DeskStation's RPX164-2 motherboard, which supports Alpha 21164 microprocessors at speeds of up to 600MHz. Ruffian RPX has a starting price of $5,995; general availability is scheduled for the third quarter. Seen at PC Expo was a demonstration version of the 600 MHz Ruffian RPX, as well as a quartet of 500 MHz Rebel workstations running visual computing applications. Significantly, DeskStation sales collateral showed support for Alpha processors running at speeds of up to 800 MHz "when they are released." For more information on DeskStation Technology, and product futures, just contact www.deskstation.com.

Enorex Microsystems graced Digital Semiconductor's AlphaPowered booth with its $2,699 Value Ultra PC 366e, a 32MB, 2.5GB short-tower desktop equipped with a 12X CD-ROM, floppy drive, Matrox Millenium 3D video card, keyboard, mouse, and WNT 4.0 Workstation. Equipped with a 433 MHz Alpha CPU, the system is $2,999; a 500 MHz version costs $3,749. Enorex also showed its Professional Ultra PC, which features 64MB RAM, 4.3GB UltraWide SCSI disk drive, Matrox graphics, and an Adaptec 2940 UltraWide SCSI-3 Controller. Prices range from $3,849 (366 MHz) and $4,149 (433 MHz) to $4,799 (500 MHz). Enorex is at www.enorex.com or 800-419-4946.

Polywell Computers demoed its Poly Alpha 500 MHz PC running financial trading and information apps as well as native-mode Microsoft Excel 97, Word 97, and Lotus Domino. Polywell offers low-cost Alpha 300 MHz workstations from $1,595, midrange 333 MHz workstations from $1,995, and advanced 400 MHz to 600 MHz ServerStations starting at $2,995. According to Polywell literature, the firm in 1998 will offer dual and quad-processor servers equipped with "up to 1000 MHz Alpha CPUs." Details can be had on the web at www.polywell.com or 800-999-1278.

An Econocore for an Econochip

The sole remaining element for a 21164PC-based Alpha econobox is a core logic chipset whose price and performance surpasses that of DEC's incumbent Pyxis chipset. Enter VLSI Technology's Polaris Alpha System Controller. The new support chip provides dual 128-bit buses and deeper pipelining than the Pyxis chipset, thereby providing higher performance (over 1.3 GB/sec memory bandwidth) than the Pyxis chipset delivers. Since there's less real estate on the board, Polaris is less expensive to build than Pyxis: VLSI claims that Polaris parts will sell for about $50 in "PC quantities." Samples are available now, volume shipment should begin in the fall, thus ushering in the first wave of 21164PC-based Alpha econoboxes.

A Made-in-Maynard Econobox?

Although Digital Semiconductor has in the past been evasive about the likelihood that Digital would produce its own low-end Alpha desktop, Tim Miller alluded to the fact that the firm would announce a 21164PC-based Alpha product "soon." This is consistent with DEC Japan's somewhat-premature announcement that it would offer a 433 MHz Alpha desktop late this summer for an estimated price of Y300,000, or about $2.7K US.

Off of the Desktop and Into the Street

The next logical target of the Alpha initiative is the mobile marketplace. According to DEC Semiconductor marketing manager Tim Miller, the mobile market can be split into two segments. The low-end segment, characterized by small, lightweight notebooks that complement users' desktop PCs, is not an appropriate place for Alpha, but Miller believes that the architecture can play a role in the high end of the marketplace, where high-performance portables equipped with large screens and full sized keyboards can be used in lieu of traditional desktop hardware.

Second Time's the Charm?

Nomadic RISC systems from Sun, IBM and Tadpole Technologies fared poorly due to pricing, power consumption, and OS support issues, but the availability of 21164PC derivatives and WNT 5.0 should address these problems. Miller refused to get specific about the forthcoming mobile Alpha chip, but he indicated that it will be implemented in 0.25-micron CMOS technology and that it will consume about the same amount of power as a Pentium II Deschutes chip.

SKD believes the mobile chip will be Samsung's so-called SV57P processor, a CMOS 7 implementation of the 21164PC architecture. The SV57P, which could offer speeds of 667 MHz or greater, is due out early next year--well in advance of the anticipated general availability of WNT 5.0 and its mobile-friendly advanced power management and plug-and-play capabilities.

Speeds, Feeds, and Sources

SKD' s discussion with Digital Semiconductor representatives revealed several heretofore unknown facts. Samsung Electronics currently is producing 21164 parts for Digital Semiconductor, rendering the Korean firm a full-fledged second source for Alpha parts. Mean while in Japan, Mitsubishi Electronics is ramping up for near-term volume production of 21164PC parts. And in an effort to put to rest once and for all the claim that Digital Semiconductor cannot cost-justify Alpha chip production, the current quarterly run rate at FAB-6 is in excess of 3M parts. While the majority of the chips produced are PCI components and StrongARM microprocessor cores, the fact remains that FAB-6 utilization has "increased by an order of magnitude," rendering Digital Semiconductor very close to break even, and "completely on track for profitability by the end of FY98." To this end, Digital Semiconductor recently mounted a hiring campaign that has resulted in multiple technical and marketing opportunities being listed on DEC's careers website and in the Boston Sunday Globe.

Nothing Lost in the Translation

Digital Semiconductor's FX!32 code translation software picked up two more awards at PC Expo. Windows Sources chose the product as its Experts' Choice "Technology of the Year," while Windows magazine picked FX!32 for a Win 100 award as one of the five best WNT Software products. Windows Sources editor-in-chief David Berlind lauded FX!32 as a tool that enables "freedom of choice" because it allows other architectures besides x86 to participate in the Windows market. Most importantly from DEC's standpoint, Berlind sees FX!32 "enabling Alpha to move into the mainstream Windows market." Editors from Windows magazine claim that FX!32 addresses the "software paradox" facing non-x86 architectures and greatly broadens the Alpha apps library. No newcomer to the winner's circle, FX!32 has garnered awards from BYTE Magazine ("Best Technology," Fall 1995 COMDEX, and "Editor's Choice," January 1997), 3D Magazine , BackOffice Magazine , and, of course, SKD .

The Applications Achilles' Heel

During SKD's last issue, we devoted a significant amount of space to questioning Digital Semiconductor's applications game plan. We noted that while a surprisingly large portion of the 3,000-odd WNT-specific apps run in native mode on Alpha, a significant number of mainstream, popular, horizontal apps have yet to be ported to Alpha. Accordingly, we suggested that Digital substantially increase its porting efforts to ensure that "checkoff applications"--even those that will not enjoy significant performance improvement on the Alpha platform--just to reassure customers that they can run their favorite native apps unchanged and untranslated on Alpha.

Digital Semiconductor did not disagree with this philosophy. Indeed, Tim Miller said that "the ultimate goal is that FX!32 goes away. To this end, Miller said, Digital Semiconductor held numerous meetings with ISVs at PC Expo, as well as at the concurrent E3 Convergence show in Atlanta, GA. ISV interest, Miller claimed, was very strong. In addition, Miller pointed out demos of native Office 97 and Corel products running on WNT-based Alpha desktops.


In the near term, Digital Semiconductor will concentrate on porting apps that seem best suited for Alpha. These include so-called visual computing apps, which run the gamut from SoftImage to low-end 3D graphics programs. Interestingly, Macintosh app developers represent an attractive target, especially in light of the fact that 3D and video developers feel that Apple's Rhapsody OS is not designed to cater to their needs.

Monday-Morning Quarterbacking?

Many would claim--and SKD is among them--that DEC's AlphaPowered effort is a day late, if not a dollar short. Indeed, an early and consistent effort to educate potential users about the benefits of Alpha computing might have reduced the impact of the Intel-Inside campaign. SKD repeatedly made just this argument to senior Digital executives, but to no avail.

DEC management made a conscious decision to defer the bulk of its beyond-the-base Alpha marketing until it could be synchronized with strong demand for WNT, and the availability of low-cost Alpha chips. That time is now. WNT established a strong beachhead, Alpha prices collapsed by 66 percent in less than a year, and the 21164PC is set to establish Pentium price parity. Bottom line: there's never been a better time to aggressively move Alpha into the computing mainstream. Stay tuned.

Editor's Note

This article originally appeared in the June 27, 1997 issue of Shannon Knows DEC, a twice-monthly newsletter on the Digital marketplace. A one-year, 24-issue subscription costs $395 in the United States, $450 elsewhere. To subscribe or obtain further information, contact Terry Shannon at shannon@world.std.com.