By Tony Hallett, 1 December 1998 10:22
NEWS Samsung Electronics has begun to ship its third generation 600MHz Alpha chip, which it claims will bring in $100m in sales next year and $1.5bn over the next five years. The South Korean company has based its non-memory chip-making activities on Alpha. It will sell the CPU to Compaq - which has used Alpha in some servers and workstations since it acquired Digital - the original designer of the chip architecture. Compaq recently rolled out Alpha-based systems running at 575MHz, but in spite of pledging support to the 64bit chip, observers still believe the company is hedging its bets, in case there are further problems with the roll out of Intel's first 64bit offering, Merced, which is due in 2000. Samsung has been keen to develop its Alpha business because other semiconductor operations - which focus on the memory chip market - have been hit hard by a worldwide market slump. Before the Compaq take-over, Digital was encouraged to license Alpha technology to other companies, after Intel started manufacturing Alpha chips. At that stage the US Federal Trade Commission insisted Intel should not be able to dominate too much of the microprocessor market.
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