Re: why support alpha??

On Wed, Dec 10, 2003 at 08:53:55PM -0500, eqe_at_cox.net wrote:
> On Wednesday 10 December 2003 08:47, you wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 10, 2003 at 04:54:13AM -0500, eqe_at_cox.net wrote:
> > > On Wednesday 10 December 2003 00:44, you wrote:
> > > > On Tue, Dec 09, 2003 at 10:43:02PM -0500, eqe_at_cox.net wrote:
> > >
> > > Yes, you have a point here but I never said alpha hackers are working in
> > > vain. I merely tryed to imply that their efforts could better serve the
> > > freebsd community by concentrating our efforts on just platforms that are
> > > more mainstream in the server market. I personally would stop dev. on
> > > anything
> >
> > If you want mainstream go Windows.
> you must be joking, but if not you have missed the point, read again.

It's exactly what you said about architecture about OS in exactly the same
hard words - just that you don't understand the architecture part.
In the same way you don't want a mainstream OS I don't want a mainstream
architecture.

alpha is the only 64 bit platform supported by FreeBSD-stable right
now - so it's the only supported 64 bit platform with production
quality.
If your application requires 64 bit then you have to take the risk
of -current or buy an alpha - but applications that realy require
64 bit are almost always incompatible with risks.
Hardware is bought with the intend to use it for several years - more
time than 4.x will give.

You can call alpha dead as long as you like, but I can tell you for
shure that almost all alpha hardware that is build today will life
much longer than most x86 hardware build today.
Why think about optimzing for a current x86 CPU when you already know
that you can't buy them next month?

You also shouldn't forget that most of must development is in fact
development about 64bitness, strong alignemnt and so on.
Everything of them is required for other 64bit platforms as well.
You don't want to be limited by 32bit x86 systems for ages right?
For the same reasons I'm very happy about recent sparc64 progress
because it has put a lot more developers on the 64bit table.

-- 
B.Walter                   BWCT                http://www.bwct.de
ticso_at_bwct.de                                  info_at_bwct.de