Despite the hoo-haa caused by Microsoft dropping NT64, and making the Big Q look more than a tad embarassed, Compaq and its partner Samsung are plugging away with the Alpha chip. Sources very close to supersecret labs said yesterday that Samsung Alpha processors clocking 833MHz without anything but air cooling are running in symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) configurations. The processors are stable at this configuration, and the sources added that the next step, to move the Alpha to 1GHz, was well within the labs' grasp. Presumably, the Alpha chips will be incorporated in those 8,16 and 32 way systems Enrico Pesatori, a senior Compaq VP, mentioned in passing at the beginning of last week. ®