It seems repetitive to go on about the argument Compaq CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer had with senior Intel VP Hans Geyer all those years ago, as exclusively reported here. But Compaq is definitely going for it big time. Our mole deep inside Texas pointed us to a secret URL with the following slides, which we've cut down to two colours to save space. A couple of these slides are more or less in the public domain but the others are most certainly not. This slide shows the common components of Compaq's attack on the low, mid and high end markets Shows the scalable nature of the Alpha platform and how the elements can be attached together. The Alpha is described as a "universal platform" How four processor systems work How 32 processors work together How 72 processors work together Price bands for low, medium and high end systems Given the above, how can IA-64 Merced hope to compete, if it arrives on time? Our mole is going to be at Compaq Innovate. Pity we won't get to meet him... ®