Digital Equipment Corporation
                                               Maynard, Massachusetts 01754-2571

Editorial contact:

Marianne Mills
(978) 568-5102

Lisa Lipson
(978) 568-4352


                  DIGITAL TO BREAK 1,000MHz BARRIER WITH
            HIGH-POWERED NEW GENERATION OF ALPHA ARCHITECTURE

                New Alpha Generation to Deliver Two to Five Times
           the Performance of Any Processor on Any Other Architecture


MAYNARD, Mass. --  February 2,  1998  --  Digital  Equipment  Corporation  today
introduced the Alpha  21264  family,  a  new  generation  of  the  64-bit  Alpha
architecture that will break the GigaHertz (1,000MHz) speed barrier and continue
Alpha's industry performance  leadership over all other architectures.

The third-generation Alpha 21264 family  will  deliver  up  to  five  times  the
highest performance of any architecture available now and in  the  near  future.
Performance will  begin at an estimated 40 SPECint95 and 60  SPECfp95  and  will
reach more than  100 SPECint95  and  150 SPECfp95,  and  operate  at  more  than
1000 MHz by the year 2000. 

"The new Alpha 21264 generation  is  an  integral  part  of  our  dual  platform
strategy," said Harry Copperman, senior  vice  president  and  group  executive,
Digital Products Division. "Digital is  fully  committed  to  developing  future
generations of the Alpha architecture and extending its  performance  leadership
for the most demanding applications."

"Consider the  technology-hungry  digital  special  effects  market,"  Copperman
added. "Alpha technology powered the incredibly  compute-intensive  creation  of
hundreds of special effects for Titanic, Men in Black, Tomorrow Never Dies,  and
many other films and television advertisements."

"The newest Alpha generation should allow Digital to  maintain  its  performance
lead  for  the   foreseeable   future,"   said   Nathan   Brookwood,   principal
microprocessor analyst at Dataquest, Inc.  "The  21264's  combination  of  high-
-bandwidth buses and micro-architectural innovations will continue to set  Alpha
apart in both server and desktop environments." 

"Based on this announcement, I'd  expect  Alpha  to  continue  to  maintain  its
performance lead up to and beyond Merced," said Andrew Allison, editor/publisher
of Inside the New Computer Industry.

The Alpha 21264 family, which will  support  three  major  operating  systems  -
DIGITAL UNIX, OpenVMS and Windows NT, will drive high-end systems  ranging  from
enterprise servers to high-speed workstations.

Dae Je Chin, CEO of System LSI at Samsung  Electronics  Ltd.,  said,  "Dataquest
has estimated that the Windows NT market will surpass 50 million  units  by  the
year  2000.  The  Alpha  21264  offers  revolutionary   Windows NT   application
performance, and we at Samsung are moving aggressively to make that  performance
available to Windows NT system manufacturers and users everywhere." 

"Microsoft values its close and long-standing relationship with  Digital,"  said
Rich Tong, vice president, Personal and  Business  Systems  Group  at  Microsoft
Corporation. "This alliance is based on a mutual commitment to  deliver  to  our
customers proven, enterprise-class solutions. We  expect  the  new  Alpha  21264
microprocessor family to raise the performance of Windows NT,  SQL  Server,  and
other Microsoft products to yet another high-water mark."


Unequaled Application Performance

The Alpha 21264 family will drive unparalleled performance leadership  in  these
high-growth markets:

Server	   				Performance Desktop
Data warehousing/mining                 Animation and rendering
Enterprise applications/ERP (e.g.,	DVD AUTHORING/PLAYBACK
PeopleSoft, Baan, Oracle, SAP/R3,       GAME DEVELOPMENT
J. D. Edwards)
Internet applications 			Speech recognition, command
content creation, ISPs)                 and response
Media asset management (e.g., video	Design automation (MCAD, MCAE, 
servers)				ECAD)
Molecular mechanics, computational 	Publishing
chemistry

	
Alpha-powered applications enable customers to process more work  in  less  time
without breaking the budget. The new Alpha 21264  family  promises  even  better
performance for the applications customers use to run their businesses, such  as
Baan,  Oracle,  PeopleSoft  and  SAP.  Enterprise  mail  applications,  such  as
Microsoft Exchange, and corporate intranet applications will support more  users
on fewer servers. The speed of Alpha 21264 will enable even faster processing of
complex images, video and audio information.

Users will be able to process ad hoc queries for data warehouse applications far
faster, which enables better informed, more accurate business decision making.

The Alpha 21264 processor family  will  deliver  online  transaction  processing
(OLTP) performance far beyond that of  any  other  computing  platform.  Digital
expects Alpha 21264 microprocessors to achieve  OLTP  performance  two  to  four
times current levels.  For  commercial  users,  this  means  reduced  time  from
customer order to product shipment and  faster  exchange  of  financial  trading
information worldwide.

Internet Services Providers (ISPs) and  corporate  intranet  administrators  can
depend on Alpha 21264 to provide dramatic  gains  in  handling  the  exponential
growth of Web users. The power of Alpha 21264 will enable companies that  depend
on Internet commerce to accommodate much higher "click rates" of online customer
inquiries and sales transactions. In addition, the new Alpha 21264  will  enable
AltaVista and other  internet search engines to search 30 million web pages even
faster - and AltaVista accomplishes this feat today in less than a second.

The breakthrough floating point performance  of  the  Alpha  21264  family  will
deliver far better performance to scientists and engineers in applications  such
as molecular simulation, data visualization and aerodynamic modeling, geographic
information systems, and finite  element  analysis.  Mechanical  and  electronic
designers and computer animators can leverage the power of Alpha 21264 to  drive
demanding graphics and rendering applications at lightning speed.

Today, Alpha-based systems lead the field in performance  and  value,  based  on
industry-standard  benchmarks  such  as  SPEC,  Linpack,  SPECweb  and   others.
Customers can expect the new generation of Alpha technology to sustain Digital's
lead in these important indicators of relative performance.


Market Support

"With Alpha 21264, Digital  delivers  another  proof  point  of  its  innovative
capabilities,"  said  Karl-Heinz  Hess,  Executive   vice   president,   Systems
Technology, SAP AG. "The previous Alpha generation has  proved  its  reliability
and its impact  on  the  SAP  market.  R/3  has  been  successfully  implemented
worldwide on Alpha based servers - on Windows NT as well as on UNIX.  We  expect
the 21264 Alpha to further strengthen  Digital's position in the SAP market."

"Alpha computers have saved us nearly 25 percent on our  computing  costs.  What
started as a proof of concept has become  a  mainstay  of  our  business,"  said
Barbara Burri, director of Information Systems at  Weather  Services  Corp.,  of
Lexington, Mass.

The  company  provides  customized  weather  forecasting  services  to   utility
companies  to  help  them  predict  energy  usage  levels,  and  to  dozens   of
publications  around  the  world.  "The  new  21264  is  certain  to  raise  the
application power and efficiency of  the  Alpha  platform  to  an  unprecedented
level."

"The large-scale migration to network computing is fueling demand  for  powerful
servers," said Gary Bloom, senior vice president of Systems Products  at  Oracle
Corporation. "With the Digital Alpha 21264 processor, our joint  customers  will
be able  to solve their most complex problems faster. Oracle's Alpha engineering
organization has worked closely with Digital's Alpha design team to optimize the
performance and  scalability of Oracle's  products,  including  Oracle8,  Oracle
Applications and Oracle Video Server."

"Baan has made Digital a strategic partner, based on the scalability of the high
performance Alpha-based servers," said  Doug  Sallen,  Baan  vice  president  of
Strategic Alliances. "We expect Alpha 21264  to  raise  application  performance
significantly for our customers, providing them a clear business advantage. It's
technology leaders such as Digital and Baan on which the world's major companies
depend for potent enterprise  computing solutions."

"Digital Alpha systems are extremely fast for animation rendering, which is  why
we have acquired more than 35 Alpha workstations and an Alpha  render  farm  for
our computer animation  department,"  said  Paul  Diener,  director  of  Digital
Production at Will Vinton Studios (creators of animated  M & M  advertisements.)
"Alpha systems are our workhorses for animation, and we welcome the prospect  of
adding yet more speed and performance with the Alpha 21264."


Advanced Design

The first Alpha 21264 processor, which will ship in systems  in  the  summer  of
1998, is fabricated in a 0.35-micron, six-layer-metal CMOS process and  features
a 2.0-volt core. Over the next few years, the Alpha 21264 will  migrate  to  .25
micron and .18 micron process technology, providing performance enhancements and
cost reductions. Each chip will contain 15.2 million transistors.

The 21264 chip's  superscalar,  deeply  pipelined  design  enables  up  to  four
instructions per clock cycle to be issued to four integer  execution  units  and
two floating point units. The 21264  instructions  include  specially  developed
Motion  Video  Instructions  (MVI),  first  introduced  in  the  Alpha   21164PC
microprocessor, to enhance visual computing and multimedia  performance  through
improved motion estimation. MVI enables  Alpha  to  perform  complex  multimedia
functions in software  that  require  expensive  additional  hardware  on  other
architectures. For example, the 21264 will be able to compress DVD  video  using
the MPEG2 video standard and Dolby AC3 audio  standard in software and  in  full
real-time. Add-in cards to support this capability on  other  architectures  can
cost between $4000 and $20,000 and more. This is just one example of the kind of
new capabilities that the 21264 family will  provide,  enabling  new  levels  of
performance and applications that have not yet been envisioned. 

The Alpha 21264  processor  features  advanced  microarchitecture  and  hardware
attributes, including:

- Out-of-order instruction execution

- Large (64KB) on-chip data and instruction caches

- Improved branch prediction through intuitive execution

- Increased bandwidth for high-speed access to level 2 cache and system memory.

The first Alpha 21264 chips are sampling now and will  enter  volume  production
in the spring of 1998.

Digital Equipment Corporation, recognized for product  and  service  excellence,
is a leading supplier of high-performance, Web-based computing solutions,  which
help enterprises compete in the global marketplace. Digital gives its  customers
a winning Internet advantage  through  a  comprehensive  portfolio  of  Internet
solutions based on award-winning systems,  advanced  networking  infrastructure,
innovative software, and  industry  applications  -  including  those  from  its
business partners. The  expertise  and  experience  of  Digital  employees  help
customers plan, design, implement, manage  and  support  Internet  solutions  in
countries throughout the world.

For the latest company information, visit Digital  on  the  World  Wide  Web  at
http://www.digital.com and/or http://www.newsdesk.com
		
                                      ####

Note to Editors:  Digital, Alpha, and the Digital logo are trademarks of Digital
                  Equipment Corporation.

                  Windows NT is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

CORP/98/863
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