Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Why is SPARC so slow?
Message-ID: <8175@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP>
Date: 11 Dec 87 15:21:36 GMT
References: <1078@quacky.UUCP> <8809@sgi.SGI.COM> <6964@apple.UUCP>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 22

In article <6964@apple.UUCP> bcase@apple.UUCP (Brian Case) writes:

| conglomerates.  I think the standardization of UNIX is good, but the
| standardization of processors is BAD.  We should have a way to achieve
| processor independence without necessarily transporting source code (and
| in fact, I have an idea for this, but can't share it).  We must not bet our
| future on a given processor!  Comments?

The concept of portable object code is not new... the "UCSD Pascal
P-System" allowed compilers to generate pseudo code from a number of
languages, and port the Pcode. Later some Pcode compilers were developed
to give the speed of compiled code without passing source code around.
Then there was a peekhole optimizer for Pcode, and, as I recall, there
was a compatible ADA compiler. I used it, but the name of the vendor has
escapes me, hopefully forever.

Hope your idea for portable code can do better.

-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me