Article 2802 of dec.notes.technology.dechips: Title: Merced not that impressive Information regarding the planned performance level for Merced is starting to leak through speaches and customer/partners being briefed by HP and Intel. One technical journalist (Jan Sandred at Datateknik) who was at Compaq Innovation 97 heard Andy Grove giving the following data points: Launch 1999 40 milj transistors 900 mhz Voltage >1V 2500 MIPS 60 SPECint I also have 2500 MFLOPS from an HP partner working in High Performance Computing. This is for the high performance variantion aimed at servers, they will make some variants for the desktop with less complexity and performance. Sound very much like an EV6 type of chip made in 0.18 micron with the added transistor budget for the x86 translator and maybe som PA-RISC translation as well. Given that we should be at 60 SPECint/90 SPECfp with EV67 by sometime 1998 and 2/3 towards EV7 by 1999 Alpha could well remain the hing end alternative to Intel even after Merced hits the streets. It's time to start challening the Merced myth that Alpha will end it's story when the big unknown arrives. Let's not make the mistake and let them get away with it. What clould we lose by challenging this alrady now? Nothing. Björn Björn [Posted by WWW Notes gateway]