Re: What is the difference between a Dec Alpha and a Mac Power PC chip?

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Article #5882

#5882

From: Terry Shannon
Date: Mon, 09 Jun 1997 00:00

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Anthony wrote:
> 
> Hi to all,
> 
> can some one please tell me what the difference is between an Dec Alpha
> and a Mac Power PC chip is ?

Very different architectures and instruction sets, for one.

> 
> They are both RISC based processors right?

Yup. Just like gasoline and diesel engines both are internal combustion
engines.

> 
> Given stuff I have read about the Alpha one might conclude that if you
> can run Windows NT on an Alpha Work station then you should be able to
> do the same on a Mac Workstation right?
> 

Wrong.

> If so why all the need for this emulaion and 3rd party board crap to do
> windows on the Mac ?
> 

There's an Alpha version of the WNT OS. IBM has withdrawn support for
the PowerPC version of WNT. Gross oversimplification, but DEC uses
binary code translation software (FX!32) to enable Intel-specific
Windows NT apps to run on Alpha systems.

Terry Shannon
http://www.hrgresearch.com

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From: Terry Shannon <shannon@world.std.com>
Subject: Re: What is the difference between a Dec Alpha and a Mac Power PC chip?
Date: 1997/06/09
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