I meant literal CPUs, in the sense of a microprocessor chip. The ECL VAXen were not killed off by RISC or 486es. They were killed off by CMOS chip-based VAX implementations.
The last generations of VAX microprocessors were about 90% as fast as the giant ECL suckers at a tiny fraction of the cost/heat/size. DEC continued to manufacture and develop them for several years after the end of ECL.
The VAX chips that killed the 9k sat in desktop/deskside chassis just like a contemporary RISC system. Literally: you could buy an identical box with either Alpha or VAX processors.
(Besides, the giant ECL VAXen were always a niche product. Nearly all the VAX systems sold were based on VLSI and microprocessors.)
Oh sure, but the 9000 was DEC's contemporary flagship against which that 486 would have been competing. And my point was that it was faster, but not immensely so -- maybe 5x, or about the same speed as the Pentium 133 that the PC owner would be buying within 3 years.
My point wasn't that VAX as an architecture was dead (it wasn't, though it would be so soon), just a reply to the contention that the line had an insurmountably large performance lead against commodity CPUs. It didn't really.
Interestingly, this performance drop when moving to CMOS was one of the drivers towards the development of clusters (at least for IBM - I am not very familiar with DEV technology).
The last generations of VAX microprocessors were about 90% as fast as the giant ECL suckers at a tiny fraction of the cost/heat/size. DEC continued to manufacture and develop them for several years after the end of ECL.
The VAX chips that killed the 9k sat in desktop/deskside chassis just like a contemporary RISC system. Literally: you could buy an identical box with either Alpha or VAX processors.
(Besides, the giant ECL VAXen were always a niche product. Nearly all the VAX systems sold were based on VLSI and microprocessors.)