Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!warwick!cvaxa!aledm From: aledm@cvaxa.sussex.ac.uk (Aled Morris) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Unix optimized for SPARC? Summary: Not optimized, but "tailored" Message-ID: <495@cvaxa.sussex.ac.uk> Date: 11 Jul 88 15:33:14 GMT References: <253@iconsys.UUCP> Organization: School of Cognitive Sciences, Univ of Sussex, Brighton, UK Lines: 34 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? I'm not worried about an evil plot, but have you thought about the hardware (implementation) dependencies that get wired into systems without anyone noticing? In a way, BSD *is* optimised for a Vax, since there is lots of code that has hardwired in a dependency on the dereference of the address zero returning zero, that pointers and ints are interchangaeable, etc. etc. [NO FLAMES PLEASE...] Likewise, when writing for the SPARC I would keep my procedure argument lists to <= 6 args, so they'll all fit into the register window, etc. etc. [I CAN HEAR YOU ALL GROANING ALREADY] It takes a mammoth effort to write code which is truly portable, and I don't mean just the machine-specific bits. If AT&T write code for the SPARC, expect to see SPARC-isms wired in. THIS IS NOT GOOD. Aled Morris systems programmer mail: aledm@cvaxa.sussex.ac.uk | School of Cognitive Science uucp: ..!mcvax!ukc!cvaxa!aledm | University of Sussex talk: +44-(0)273-606755 x4284 | Falmer, Brighton, England "I'm living in the future/I feel wonderful/I'm tipping over backwards... I'm so ambitious/I'm looking back/I'm running a race and you're the book I read"