DEC OUTLINES ROAD MAP FOR ALPHA FROM HERE TO 2003

May 15th 1996

Digital Equipment Corp has a little Alpha road map it
draws for customers showing the 15m-transistor EV6, otherwise the
21264 and now planned to come out next year, as being capable of
being clocked at 500MHz, our sister paper Unigram.X report. There has
already been speculation that it should be able to deliver 800 to
1,000 SPECint92. Then there is a three-year interval on the map
between the EV6 and the next generation, broken, it's expected, at
the 18-month mark by an EV6 shrink, the EV67, that raises the clock
speed.

The 100m-transistor EV7, the first Alpha based on a 0.25 micron
process, is due in the year 2000. DEC seems to be a little more
conservative these days and predicts it will take 500MHz to 750MHz
clocks rather than the 800MHz we first heard. DEC watchers say it
should be good for 3,000 SPECint92. Then there's another three-year
hiatus, again with an intervening EV78 shrink, before the
next-generation 250m-transistor EV8 makes its appearance. It is
intended to be done on a 0.18-micron process that will yields chips
that can take clocks of between 750MHz and 1GHz. EV6 could turn out
to be the first chip with an eight-way instruction issue. The EV7 is
to be 16-way and the EV8 32-way. We imagine that whatever operating
systems they may run, the compilers will have to be adjusted to
optimise for those features.