Digital Technical Journal

This edition of the Digital Technical Journal (Vol. 9, No. 4, 1997) contains five technical articles focusing on performance optimization for Alpha-based systems:

• Optimizing Alpha Executables on Windows NT with Spike: Describes the Spike optimization system, which uses profile-directed optimization to improve the performance of large, call-intensive applications.
• Analyzing Memory Access Patterns of Programs on Alpha-based Architectures: Details an experimental memory profiling tool used to gain insights into algorithmic performance and memory traffic.
• OpenVMS Alpha 64-bit Very Large Memory (VLM) Design: Discusses improvements to memory management for VLM applications, including memory-resident global sections and shared page tables.
• PowerStorm 4DT: A High-performance Graphics Software Architecture: Examines the design and competitive positioning of the PowerStorm 4DT graphics adapter series.
• DART: Fast Application-level Networking via Data-copy Avoidance: Explains the DART network adapter architecture designed to increase throughput by reducing system-level memory copy operations.