It is impossible from outside the situation to provide any definitive insight. But since the news reports, even in the trade press, have been so vague, it is worthwhile to consider what is involved. DEC's flagship RISC processor, the Alpha chip, has, since its introduction in 1992, been rated as head and shoulders above all other microprocessor chips in the market based on performance. Recently, Intel's high end but commodity priced Pentiums have shown signs of possibly reaching the performance of DEC's low end but high priced Alphas, threatening to erase DEC's performance advantages. Despite this, Intel has increasingly been using RISC technologies at the core of its new processors, and providing X86 compatibility in part through internal emulation.
Computers process sequences of instructions.
The situation can be likened to an assembly line. These operations tend to involve finely balanced juggling of data. Getting these techniques to work at all, and then to work advantageously, involves a great deal of coordination, fine tuning and digital trickery. Issued October 22, 1996. Pipeline utilizing an integral cache for transferring data to and from a register.