Alpha 21264: The Fastest RISC Chip for NT

The Alpha 21264 CPU: NT's Greatest RISC (1998)

Digital Equipment's Alpha 21264 is a 64-bit RISC processor that runs Windows NT and is already available, with clock speeds expected to exceed 700 MHz this year and reach 1 GHz by 2000. It executes up to six instructions per clock cycle, features out-of-order execution with 80 instructions in flight, and includes new motion video instructions for efficient MPEG-2 decoding. Despite the uncertain future of RISC and Digital's acquisition by Compaq, the Alpha 21264 could challenge Intel's upcoming IA-64 Merced for performance supremacy.