Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, one of the companies trying to raise the profile of Digital Equipment Corp’s Alpha RISC chip to compete with Intel Corp on the desktop (CI No 3,186), has commenced mass production of a 533MHz version of the chip, aimed at Windows NT and Unix workstations. Targeting the visual computing market as well, Samsung says the chip has three- dimensional graphics functions, computer-aided design, moving pictures and virtual reality. The South Korean company says by the end of this year, it will also have a 600MHz version of the Alpha chip in mass production. It expects production levels this year to be around 4,000, with 110,000 next year and ramping up to 1million in 1999. For Samsung, the Alpha represents a diversification, broadening its offering from memory chips to central processing units. It says by the first quarter of next year, it will further broaden its offering with lower-power CPUs for personal computers.
