Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!bellcore!texbell!sugar!ficc!karl From: karl@ficc.uu.net (karl lehenbauer #) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: My ramblings on the NeXT machine Summary: Mach isn't incompatible with Sys V Message-ID: <2330@ficc.uu.net> Date: 30 Nov 88 16:44:42 GMT References: <26812@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <27965@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <4501@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> Distribution: na Organization: Ferranti International Controls Lines: 33 > >> They have no particular plan to adopt a "standard" UNIX. > Bob Sutterfield writes: > >Why bother, when Mach has technical advantages? Besides, as your ""s > >imply, there's no such thing (yet) as a standard UNIX, much as some > >parties might like to define theirs as one. In article <4501@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>, caromero@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (C. Antonio Romero) writes: > Well, everything I've heard has suggested that they're not really > married to Mach, believe it or not... at a demo I saw the > marketing type gave the impression that if there were enough pressure > for a SysV.4 Unix, or something like that, it might be offered. Well, Mach is really nothing more (or less) than an OS kernel providing multitasking, memory management and interprocess communications. Efforts are under way at CMU to move 4.3 BSD out of the kernel. Then other operating systems could be ported to run under Mach, gaining Mach's machine-independent virtual memory management and multiprocessing capabilities as well as the potential of greater concurrency in the OS (since a lot of stuff that used to be in the monolithic kernel now runs as separate tasks, and the thread implementation of lightweight processes enables these programs to be written to have even more concurrency. The point is that there is nothing incompatible between Mach and System V per se. System V extensions could be added to Mach. I would be very, very surprised if NeXT abandoned Mach, since it provides their machines the capability to transparently run programs on other Next machines on a network and the eventual ability to add more CPU boards to your Next machine and have Mach transparently make use of them by dispatching tasks on a "most favorable CPU" basis. -- -- +1 713 274 5184, uunet!ficc!karl -- Ferranti International Controls, 12808 W. Airport Blvd., Sugar Land, TX 77478