Ada on the Iris

[Dave Babcock]

>> We are looking at personal iris' for a front end to our Gould simulation
>> computers.  They also need to serve as our software development platform.
>> We will have a Sun Sparcserver as our fileserver with Sparcstations
>> on the network as well.  One requirement of the simulation is that our
>> computers run Ada.  Specifically, Ada that can be linked with Fortran.
>> Any input on Ada on the Iris would be greatly appreciated.
 
>> Thank you,
 
>> Susan Rashkin
>> Nasa Ames Dryden Flight Research Facility
>> Edwards, Ca.
>> 805-274-2581
>> rashkin at elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov

In fact there is an Ada compiler for the Iris system which should meet your
needs.  It's been available for about 1 1/2 years.  The most recent version
(2.0) can be ordered as product number S4-ADA-2.0.  It is a derivative of VADS
(the Verdix Ada Development System) and was validated under ACVC 1.10 (June 26,
1989).

The Ada compiler shares a common code generator with C, Fortran 77 and Pascal;
it fully (and easily) supports 'Pragma Interface' to these languages.  In
addition to the usual VADS development tools (Ada librarian, source debugger,
pretty printer, Unix system call packages, etc.) SGI provides a complete Ada
interface package to our 3D color graphics hardware.  I'm guessing from your
application area (simulation) that graphics will play an important part.

NFS runs on all members of the Iris family including the Personal Iris.  In
fact, I myself have a Personal Iris which I use for Ada development.  Some of
my Ada libraries are remote mounted from other systems on the network.

Since you'll be running in a heterogeneous network you might also find our new
'Workspace' product useful.  It is a standard part of system release 3.2 and
provides a graphical user interface (point and click) to the system.  You can
easily generate your own icons which represent files and/or invoke tools either
on the local system or (transparently) on any remote system.  We demonstrated
the Ada development tools integrated into Workspace at Tri-Ada in October and
it was very favorably received.

I hope that this provides you with the information you need.  If not, please
ask.

+-----------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| Dave Babcock                      | Email: daveb at wpd.sgi.com             |
| Silicon Graphics Computer Systems |                                      |
| P.O. Box 7311  -  M/S 9U-520      | Voice: (415) 335-1547       (local)  |
| 2011 N. Shoreline Blvd.           |        (800) 442-1020 2222  (CA)     |
| Mountain View, CA   94039-7311    |        (800) 341-1020 2222  (not CA) |
+-----------------------------------+                                      |
| ** Views expressed are my own. ** | Fax:   (415) 969-2314                |
+-----------------------------------+--------------------------------------+