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Compaq's Wildfire gets first public benchmark
And The Big Q is The Big Q no more
The first public benchmark of a Compaq Wildfire system, which uses Alpha microprocessors, has been posted on the Web. The benchmark, for a GS 320 system running Tru64 Unix 5.1, Oracle 8i 8.1.6 and running that dreadfully boring R3 SAP stuff, can be found on this site. The GS320, which includes 32 Alpha CPUs, achieves more than a respectable rating, coming second after one of those big Fujitsu Siemens GP7000F models, which actually uses 64 microprocessors, in a two-tier client/server test. Compaq has been quietly shipping seed Wildfire systems to its customers ahead of its official launch, which is slated for 16 May. Meanwhile, Terry Shannon, editor of Shannon knows Compaq, has confirmed that the firm will drop branding its identity using that large letter Q, through which the beak of The Register's vulture peeked towards the end of last year. The company has gradually been phasing out the "Q" identity over the last few months in the US. In other Alpha news, reports said that Alpha Processor Inc (API), will get a 1GHz+ processor out of its fabs at Samsung round about the middle of the year. IBM, which will also make Alphas using copper interconnect technology is expected to start sampling these chips in the next few months. ®