Alpha Microprocessor type

As part of the Alpha Architecture definition every microprocessor generation is assigned to a unique number. For the currently announced systems the mapping is as follows:

Code numbers for Alpha microporcessors
Code number	Chip	EV
2	21064	EV4
4	21066	LCA
5	21164	EV5
6	21064A	EV45
7	21164A	EV56
8	21264	EV6
9	21164PC	PCA56
11		EV67
12		EV68CB
13		EV68A
15		EV7

Definition in OpenVMS and Digital Unix

OpenVMS

The correspondence between Code number and Chip type is given in module HWRBBDEF of sys$library:sys$lib_c.tlb. This module can be extracted e.g. with the following command:

$lib/extract=hwrpbdef/out=hwrpbdef.h sys$library:sys$lib_c.tlb

For an OpenVMS 7.3-2 system the file looks like this. The relevant definitions start with HWRPB_CPU_TYPE.
For a given system you can find the code number by using f$getsyi("REAL_CPUTYPE"), e.g.

$write sys$output f$getsyi("REAL_CPUTYPE")
2

Digital Unix

The mapping is given in the file /usr/include/alpha/cpuconf.h . This time the relevant entries end all with _CPU. Under Digital Unix 4.0B the file looks like this.

Sample code

Stephen Hoffman has written some sample code which runs on OpenVMS and Digital Unix. This is available from VMS Wizard area, or from here.
Running the program produces results like the following:

# ./alpha_implver_amask_features
Alpha Microprocessor Family:
  DECchip 21164 or variant
  (EV5 microprocessor core)
Alpha extensions available:
  none.

Comments to: Martin P.J. Zinser
Last modified: 20060123