PALO ALTO, Calif. — As it prepares its bid to make the Alpha microprocessor architecture an industry standard for 64-bit computing, Compaq Computer Corp. has lost one of the seminal engineers behind the Alpha program. Dan Dobberpuhl, an early architects of Alpha, left the company last Fridayto join an unnamed startup.

Dobberpuhl was the director of Compaq's Palo Alto Design Center, where the next-generation Alpha processor, dubbed the EV-7, is being designed. He was a founder of that center for Digital Equipment Corp., the originator of the Alpha architecture.

Sources inside and outside Compaq's Alpha design team praised Dobberpuhl as a talented engineer, but none was willing to guess the impact his departure might have on Alpha in its race for high-end computing performance with Intel's Merced.

"It's not like the end of the world for us," said one engineer in the group. "Still, it's impossible to know if it will slow the EV-7 program down."

"He was definitely one of the founding fathers of the Alpha program and prior VAX microprocessors at Digital," said David Patterson, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, who is familiar with Dobberpuhl's work. "I think he's an extraordinarily talented guy who is going to be a big help to any startup. But it's not clear that the program they have running at [Compaq] would be derailed now that he has left, unless lots of other senior designers left as well."

According to the engineer in the Alpha program, less than half a dozen engineers have left the group since Compaq acquired it. He speculated that Dobberpuhl may have left the company to recapture some of the excitement of leading a project like StrongARM.

The Palo Alto group was originally set up to explore a low-power version of Alpha, but decided to build a chip based on an ARM core instead. The resulting StrongARM won kudos for its Mips-per-watt ratings and is now part of Intel Corp.'s product portfolio, following a deal in which Digital sold most of its semiconductor operations — apart from the Alpha — to Intel.

"In my view, most of the people who have left [Digital's semiconductor group] did so because they liked the StrongARM experience," said the Alpha engineer. "It was something really world class. Alpha is large and no one person can get their head around it, but would only be responsible for some chunk of Alpha that itself might be bigger than StrongARM."

Compaq has already named a new head of the Palo Alto Design Center. But the company refused to identify that person or to comment on Dobberpuhl's departure.

The defection comes at a time when Compaq is trying to pull together a broader alliance behind Alpha. Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission ruled that it would let Digital sell its semiconductor operations to Intel only if Digital could secure new second-source licensees of the Alpha architecture, which competes with the high-end X86. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. was at that time in discussions to license Alpha, in part because AMD will use the EV-7 processor bus on its upcoming high-end X86 processors. However, an AMD spokesman said the company has no plans to make Alpha parts unless a broader market emerges for the chip.

"There's a strong push in Compaq to find partners that would use Alpha technology," said Compaq's chief technology officer, Bill Strecker, in an interview in June. "That's something I'm very much engaged in."

However, Samsung has to date expanded its work on Alpha by launching a U.S. sales and marketing unit to promote the processor. A separate partner, Mitsubishi, has discontinued any work with the architecture.