What (who) is DEC Alpha - definition

64-BIT RISC MICROPROCESSOR

Alpha processor; Digital Alpha; Alpha AXP; ALPHA processor; Alpha chip; Dec Alpha; Alpha (microprocessor); Motion Video Instructions; Alpha CPU; Digital Equipment Corp. vs. Intel; Alpha axp; Dec alpha; DEC alpha

DEC Alpha

<processor> A RISC microprocessor from DEC. In November 1995, the Alpha was purportedly the fastest non-research chip used in commonly available workstations. It is superpipelined and superscalar. In February 1996 it was clocked at 200 MHz and in March 1998 at 666 MHz. (1998-03-17)

DEC PRISM

Parallel Reduced Instruction Set Machine; MicroPRISM; DEC Prism

PRISM (Parallel Reduced Instruction Set Machine) was a 32-bit RISC instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was the outcome of a number of DEC research projects from the 1982–1985 time-frame, and the project was subject to continually changing requirements and planned uses that delayed its introduction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_PRISM

DEC Special Graphics

Code page 1090; DEC Special; DEC-SPECIAL; Dec-special

DEC Special Graphics is a 7-bit character set developed by Digital Equipment Corporation. This was used very often to draw boxes on the VT100 video terminal and the many emulators, and used by bulletin board software.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Special_Graphics

Wikipedia

DEC Alpha

Alpha (original name Alpha AXP) is a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Alpha was designed to replace 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computers (CISC) and to be a highly competitive RISC processor for Unix workstations and similar markets.

Alpha is implemented in a series of microprocessors originally developed and fabricated by DEC. These microprocessors are most prominently used in a variety of DEC workstations and servers, which eventually formed the basis for almost all of their mid-to-upper-scale lineup. Several third-party vendors also produced Alpha systems, including PC form factor motherboards.

Operating systems that support Alpha included OpenVMS (formerly named OpenVMS AXP), Tru64 UNIX (formerly named DEC OSF/1 AXP and Digital UNIX), Windows NT (discontinued after NT 4.0; and prerelease Windows 2000 RC2), Linux (Debian, SUSE, Gentoo and Red Hat), BSD UNIX (NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD up to 6.x), Plan 9 from Bell Labs, and the L4Ka::Pistachio kernel. A port of Ultrix to Alpha was carried out during the initial development of the Alpha architecture, but was never released as a product.

The Alpha architecture was sold, along with most parts of DEC, to Compaq in 1998. Compaq, already an Intel x86 customer, announced that they would phase out Alpha in favor of the forthcoming Hewlett-Packard/Intel Itanium architecture, and sold all Alpha intellectual property to Intel, in 2001, effectively killing the product. Hewlett-Packard purchased Compaq in 2002, continuing development of the existing product line until 2004, and selling Alpha-based systems, largely to the existing customer base, until April 2007.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC Alpha