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Alpha chip powers Celera genome burst

Mysterious unannounced chips aid "secret of life"

Biotech firm Celera said yesterday that it has now finished sequencing 99 per cent of the human genetic pattern, and confirmed it will complete its corporate push during the course of this year. Sources close to the firm's plans said it has used "mass quantities" of an as yet unreleased 667MHz Alpha processor, each of which includes 8Mb of cache*, incorporated in four way ES40 AlphaServers. Further, the next step of Celera's plan involves using faster Compaq technology to put the sequences together to form the human genome, thus giving it a massive lead over an alternative, government sponsored scheme. This is probably Wildfire technology. The Human Genome Project wants Celera to share its data with it, and is backed by both Mr Tony Blair, the English prime minister, and President Bill Clinton, who currently runs the United States. Informed sources said that Celera has chosen Alpha technology because of its number crunching capabilities, and it is not alone amongst biotech firms in choosing the microprocessor over other competing technologies. Sandia Labs has an installed base of nearly 3,000 Alpha CPUs, and has recently added 1,300 AlphaServer DS10L Slates to its computing armory. Compaq is expected to formally announce its 667MHz-8Mb Alphas during the course of next week. ® * Compaq does not seem to make such a song and dance about chip announcements as Intel and the rest. According to a contributor on our Bulletin Board, these have been available for some time. He adds that Alphas are particularly suitable for biotech apps. But the chips that are available only have 4Mb of cache. Now wouldn't it be great if you could still get Alpha for NT on a 666/8Mb cache system?

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