Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!apollo!gallen From: gallen@apollo.uucp (Gary Allen) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Unix optimized for SPARC? Message-ID: <3cf43568.d8e9@apollo.uucp> Date: 29 Jun 88 18:12:00 GMT References: <253@iconsys.UUCP> Reply-To: gallen@diskless.UUCP (Gary Allen) Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, MA Lines: 49 In article <253@iconsys.UUCP> ron@iconsys.UUCP (Ron Holt) writes: > >Recently, there has been fear expressed that evil AT&T and Sun will >some how optimize future versions of Unix for SPARC. Considering the >portability of Unix being one of its best known traits, wouldn't this >be rather difficult to do? I wouldn't consider BSD optimized for the >VAX nor SVR3 optimized for the 3B2 even though these machines were >used as the porting bases for their respective Unix variants. Of course, >there are very machine specific sections of the Unix kernel, the VM code >being a good example, but other than that, how could Unix be optimized >for SPARC? >-- >Ron Holt UUCP: {uunet,caeco}!iconsys!ron No one has called Sun or AT&T evil (although some people seem to believe them altruistic). Every person, organization, and company is full of built-in predjudices about the way things are, the way things should be, what's "normal" what's not, etc. Unfortunately, these biases affect the way we all do things. People by their nature do what's in their interests, hardly realizing that what they percieve as the normal correct way to do things is only so in their own context. Do you believe that UNIX ala SUN/AT&T would just HAPPEN to work out well for Apollo's PRISM risc machine and poor for their own SPARC? Hardly! That's not evil on their part nor is there some conspiracy to do anybody in. A tiny tiny tiny tiny example: years ago, I worked with a machine whose native mode of handling chars was unsigned. Now, K&R's C manual specifically stated that the sign of the 'char' type was machine dependent and beyond the scope of the C language definition (yeah, I know the diff between C and UNIX). So, C chars on that machine were implemented unsigned; seems pretty reasonable huh? Well, you wouldn't believe all of the trouble that this caused. There was much UNIXage that simply wouldn't work right, let alone dozens of customer applications that had to be #ifdef'ed to death, if we could even get their business (porting was a BIG deal in those days). The situation was so bad that we had to take a performance hit (on a machine whose main virtue was brute horsepower) and simulate signed characters. Where was the evil, the conspiracy, incompetence, or brilliance. Nowhere!! That's why the Celtics aren't allowed to provide the referees when they play the lakers, and why my ex-wives (thank god) weren't allowed to pass divorce decrees. NOBODY IS IMPARTIAL!! I don't represent anybody, I'm totally irresponsible. Gary Allen Apollo Computer Chelmsford, MA {decvax,yale,umix}!apollo!gallen "Oh Yeah, our CEO can beat up your CEO!"