Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!unisoft!hoptoad!gnu From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Single tasking the wave of the future? Message-ID: <3445@hoptoad.uucp> Date: Wed, 2-Dec-87 05:24:15 EST Article-I.D.: hoptoad.3445 Posted: Wed Dec 2 05:24:15 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 5-Dec-87 12:48:52 EST References: <201@PT.CS.CMU.EDU> <388@sdcjove.CAM.UNISYS.COM> <988@edge.UUCP> <2581@mmintl.UUCP> Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco Lines: 24 > Another trend... ...is that towards individual > (single-user) computers. The future of multi-tasking on such machines is > very much in question... > -- > Frank Adams ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka > Ashton-Tate 52 Oakland Ave North E. Hartford, CT 06108 Does anybody seriously believe this? I don't. All the little single chip micros in microwave ovens are running realtime code; depending on internal structure, this could be single threaded polling, one task with lots of interrupts, or many tasks. 99% of the rest of the computers will be "general purpose" and all of them will be running multitasking. Whether they call it "TSR and steal interrupts" or they call it "fork()" or "multifinder", it will be multitasking. Mr. Adams, who works at a major MSDOS software house, may be confused by the fact that on MSDOS you have to write your own scheduler and task switching to get multitasking. That hasn't stopped everyone from doing it, given the obvious benefits of multitasking; it just makes it 30 times as hard. -- {pyramid,ptsfa,amdahl,sun,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu gnu@toad.com "Watch me change my world..." -- Liquid Theatre