End of the line for HP's Alpha | CNET News.com

End of the line for HP's Alpha | CNET News.com "Hewlett-Packard will release its final Alpha processor on Monday, the beginning of the end for a chip dynasty that never was.
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Created by Digital Equipment and released in 1992, the Alpha often drew accolades from analysts and benchmark testers for its performance. The first Alpha ran at a record-breaking 200MHz. The 64-bit chip was engineered to run multiple operating systems--Unix in addition to Microsoft's Windows NT--and was expected to have a life span of 25 years.
Alpha was also the first chip to reach a clock speed of 1GHz under ordinary conditions, back in 1999.
Unfortunately for Digital, the chip--and servers based on it--won only a dedicated core of customers. It was expensive, and finding software applications to run on the Alpha was a constant struggle for its users. Because of low sales of Alpha systems, Microsoft stopped shipping a version of Windows NT for the chip architecture in 1999."