ultrasparc & alpha

[romancandles]

hey guys
i've been reading tomshardware guide for a few years now but this is my first time posting ane what not. i was just wondering why we can't build PC with ultrasparc or alpha processors like we can with Intel and AMD procs. It doesn't seem like any of ther mobo manufacturers make mobos for those CPUs. any clues?

thanx
romancandles

 

[Crashman]

Sun probably doesn't allow it. You notice that all the PC board makers either have an Intel licence or go with AMD.

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

 

[Mephistopheles]

Itanium never showed up there too.

 

[romancandles]

Thanx Crashman & Mephistopheles for your replies... I figured as well. I just wish I could stuff with those RISC procs.
thanx again

 

[reever2]

For the same reason you cant build Apple computers, the people who sell the computers use proprietary parts and do not sell them to the public. And plus theres no real reason for a home user to own a computer with those processors in them, most of them are 64-bit and the operating systems cost a lot of money since only corporations are the ones buying them

 

[Mephistopheles]

yes, reever2 is right. You can't, for instance, find motherboards that support Itanium. If you're interested in Itanium, the smallest-budget option is purchasing a small workstation. And then, some company - like Dell or HP - has already chosen (if not designed on their own) motherboards and full systems.

You also have to bear in mind that those processors are usually more scalable and it would only be practical and reasonable to want some task-specific configuration with one of them. Itanium's E8870 chipset, for instance, has a highly scalable "node" chip that acts as a controller and interacts with 4 other memory hubs for up to 128GB of memory per node. Anyway, it's not physically possible to design a general-purpose motherboard for such a system, because of the huge amount of memory you can have. However, for a small workstation, a company like HP can, in cooperation with the right people, design a specific motherboard with "small" memory capacity (say, 12 or 16GB) with given Intel chips from a certain chipset.

It's not that easy with server/high-performance/enterprise level processors, I guess... Because they're high-performance parts, they usually cost more anyway too. :frown:

 

[juin]

Supermicro is to produce public motherboards for small workstation for Itanium and Windows 2003/64bit can be buy now

I dont like french test

 

[Mephistopheles]

really? that's one of the most interesting things I've heard in a while, for the workstation market. I mean, even a Supermicro board supporting 2 Deerfields might get an excellent acceptance, if priced correctly to target the workstation market.

BTW, does deerfield use the same socket as Madison?...
and from where did you get that info on supermicro?

 

[juin]

as long that IA-64 windows is offe only at the enterprise edition so the 4 digit it make much difference but if it can take out windows longhorn will cost just a extra price for 64 bit version and mobo manufacturer will start producing after Nvidia and ATI will made driver for Quadro and open firegl and is bye bye X86.

I dont like french test