" Samsung Introduces 500MHz Alpha 21164 Microprocessor "

First product resulting from the Digital/Samsung licensing agreement to begin mass production by Q2 1997

Seoul, Korea and San Jose, Calif., United States, October 31, 1996

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. announced successful fabrication of the Alpha 21164 microprocessor . The parts are fully compatible with Digital Equipment Corporation’s Alpha 21164 product family which is currently in production. Samsung will demo an Alpha NT workstation in their booth #L2412 at Fall COMDEX ‘ 96. General sampling will begin in January ‘97 with speeds ranging from 366MHz to 500 MHz .

The 64-bit Alpha 21164 microprocessor is the first product coming out of the Digital /Samsung Alpha alliance agreement which was announced in June 1996. The agreement licensed Samsung as an alternate source manufacturer of current and future implementations of Digital’s high performance Alpha microprocessors. In addition, the agreement granted Samsung a license to market, sell and distribute Alpha microprocessors worldwide.

“One of the industry's leading manufacturers of electronic components and systems, Samsung is well equipped to deliver Alpha technology to the mainstream Windows NT market,” said Ed Caldwell, vice president, Digital Semiconductor. “The availability of the Alpha 21164 microprocessor from Samsung will help bring Alpha performance, Windows compatibility, and price/performance advantage to a great and growing number of PC power users.”

The Alpha 21164 family delivers a compelling value proposition for Microsoft Windows NT-based desktop and server market segments by combining the highest native performance with seamless Windows compatibility. Digital’s FX!32 translation software provides Alpha users the convenience of running any off the shelf , shrink-wrapped WIN32 applications.

Platform Environment

Multimedia content producers are demanding fast response times from high performance platforms to improves content creation efficiency. At the same time, today’s consumers are demanding a transition from static 2-D computing to the realism of 3-D graphics, surround sound and full motion video.

“The processor-independent Windows NT operating system in conjunction with the highest performance Alpha processor, delivering peak execution rates of up to 2BIPS, will help enable this new multimedia, content-rich world of visual computing,” commented DJChin, Executive Vice President and General Manager at Samsung.

Alpha, the Performance Leader

The high-end Alpha 21164-500 delivers an estimated 15.4 SPECint95 and 21.1 SPECfp95, while the low-end Alpha 21164-366 delivers an estimated 11.3 SPECint95 and 15.4 SPECfp95, making them the industry’s highest performance microprocessors for both integer and floating point applications. Applications such as video conferencing, 3-D modeling , CAD, video editing , multimedia authoring, image rendering and animation will see a significant boost in performance when run on Alpha 21164 processor-based systems. Furthermore, the high performance Alpha 21164 products have host based digital video disk(DVD) playback capability . This capability can lead to significant savings in the system price of DVD enabled desktops since the Alpha eliminates the need for an expensive accelerator add-in card.

Complete Windows Compatibility

Windows compatibility is assured through Alpha’s unique Digital FX!32 translation technology. Digital FX!32 will allow transparent access to all x86 32-bit Windows applications and will enable them to run seamlessly on Alpha platforms at performances comparable to or higher than the x86 platform. The Digital FX!32 is available free for charge to all Alpha users. Support is provided in Windows NT for all 16-bit and DOS applications through the Insignia emulator solution resident within Windows NT.

Alpha system users will be able to unleash the full power of this product family and realize unsurpassed performance when using the vast and growing library of native Windows NT applications. More than 1600 Alpha native Win 32 Applications(Link to Alpha Native Application for Windows NT have already been ported, with another 1000 ports underway. A wide range of natively ported software, which can take advantage of the full performance attributes of the Alpha 21164 family of products , is available for server, personal productivity , electronic publishing, Internet client/server and multimedia content creation applications.

Popular server applications available include Microsoft’s BackOffice, Lotus Notes, CA-Unicenter, SAP and Oracle. Engineering and content creation applications such as AutoCAD, ProEngineering, 3D studios, Lightwave, Softimage and Elastic Reality are also available. Coverage in the personal productivity area include popular titles such as Microsoft Word, Excel and Netscape Navigator.

Pricing and Availability

Limited samples of the Alpha 21164 product family are now available. Samsung will begin mass production of the Alpha 21164 family in Q2 1997, in its sate-of-the-art 8-inch fabrication facility located in Kihueng, South Korea. As the world’s sixth largest semiconductor manufacturer, Samsung will leverage its technology and high volume manufacturing expertise to drive both the performance and cost of the Alpha platform in 1997. Please contact Samsung for Alpha pricing details.

The Alpha 21164 product family is built using Samsung’s proven 0.35 micron four-metal technology. This 0.35 micron process is based on the .3 micron four metal layer technology developed by Samsung in early 1996. It provides 2.5V to 3.3V operation and is optimized for high speed, high density applications such as CPU , Ultrafast SRAM and high-end ASICs.

Samsung Semiconductor

Samsung Electronics Co.,Ltd. is the world’s leading producer of semiconductor memory products and a $21 billion affiliate of the Samsung Group, an $84 billion Korea-based conglomerate, Samsung is ranked the sixth largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world, with total annual semiconductor sales exceeding $8 billion last year. The company also develops, manufactures and markets audio and video products, home appliances, computers and peripheral products, dispay products and telecommunications and information systems.

Product Guide

21164 Alpha Microprocessor (KP21164)

Alpha PC 164LX Motherboard (MB164LX)

Alpha PC 164UX Motherboard (MB164UX)

Alpha PC 164BX Motherboard (MB164BX)