Rumours about "new" U*IX ?

[Jim Gettys]

In article <1991Jan13.070816.24882 at ircam.fr> fingerhu at ircam.fr (Michel Fingerhut) writes:
>Jim Gettys writes:
>>Folks are certainly working on it (hard).
>
>Some questions arise...
>
>1.  Will it work on *all* of DEC's platforms, i.e., the famous 58x0 as well
>    as DECstations 3100, for instance?  We have both, and it would be unthinka-
>    ble to upgrade one type of machine without the other and have users lost
>    with yet another brand of U*ix.
>

	That's the point of the real Ultrix release; the developer's
release is just DS3100/DS2100, and is basically a packaging of close
to exactly what the OSF shipped, but when the full release happens,
will run on all machines that Ultrix runs on.

>2.  If it does, does this mean it's a multiprocessor U*ix?  One that works ade-
>    quately with the 58x0?

Mach (which OSF/1 is derived from) is an SMP system.  One of the systems
OSF/1 was developed on is the Encore Multimax, which has many more
processors than a 58x0.  "Works adaquately" is a subjective statement,
and as I haven't seen OSF/1 running on the machine yet, I can't say.
We have every reason to believe it should work fine.

>
>3.  If so, what about the other rumors about SCO UNIX?

Unfounded rumors.

>
>4.  What about the *reliability* of OSF/1 tools?  *If* I am not mistaken, their
>    compiler is derived from gcc, which has known problems with DEC/MIPS archi-
>    tecture, and provides less debugging options than cc (which has some
>    problems too). (Is this why Jim Gettys says "We certainly ran large piles
>    of exiting executable we have here "... )
>       ^^^^^^^

So I can't type :-) :-(.  The sentence was supposed to read 
"..of executables..".

The OSF used GCC for its work (and did mucho
work on GCC to make it work well on the MIPS architecture).  If I'm not
mistaken, not all of this work has yet been reintegrated by the GNU folks.
Gcc is in the developer's release; there was no statement that we
expect it to be the production compiler when the full release occurs.

The kinds of things we have to do to ship OSF/1 as Ultrix, for example
include integrating all our compilers and machine support, most of which 
the OSF does not have, not to mention extensive field testing, and
making sure customer's existing executables continue to run, just to
mention a few.  As you may or may not have gathered by now, Digital
has a new suite of compiler technology coming, as evidenced by the new
DEC Fortran on RISC compiler announced last week, which, from talking to
some friends that have it, is a good improvement over the existing
MIPS compiler.  There is a lot of work to do to get from the developer's
kit to the full release.  Please read the caveats on the developer's
kit before deciding if you want it; it is intended for people who
need an advance look at the new functionality OSF/1 provides, not
as a production system.

>5.  Will this software be supported by DEC?
>

Not sure precisely which software you mean...  If you mean gcc, I
don't think so.  If you mean OSF/1, yes.

>I'd much like to understand DEC's strategy -- after all we (the end users)
>have to plan ahead too...
>
The strategy is simple: have the best Unix system in the market.  We
believe that OSF/1 provides the best base system to work with.  History
will judge if the strategy is correct.

Hope this helps.  I'm not in the Ultrix group, so this is to the
best of my personal understanding.
					- Jim



--
Digital Equipment Corporation
Cambridge Research Laboratory