steve@alberta.UUCP (Steve Sutphen) (06/10/85)
I have sent the following RFQ out to the places indicated. I would like feedback from you - members of the Lisp community as to how you judge the suitablity of the various Lisp machines on the market. I would find reports from actual users as well as the vendors especially valuable. I will be summarizing to the net after the RFQ closes (in 2-3 weeks). Please indicate if you wish to remain anonymous (the results may be filtered anyway). You will notice that I didn't put any sort of performacne evaluation in the RFQ. That is because it is not well defined (as far as I know) for these types of architectures and applications. If you want to take a crack at a performace measure I am willing to look at. Be forwarned, Lisp is not my native tongue. Lisp Machine Inc. 6033 West Century Boulevard Los Angeles, California 90045 Texas Instruments P.O. Box 809063 Dallas, Texas 75380-9063 Tektronix Inc P.O. Box 500 Beaverton, Oregon 97077 Xerox Electro-Optical Systems 300 North Halstead Street Pasadena, California 91107 Symbolics Inc. 257 Vassar Street Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 Lisp Machine RFQ. This department is going to be purchasing one or more symbolic processors which will run Lisp, Smalltalk (or other object oriented languages), and perhaps Prolog. The workstation(s) should be selfcontained (with a disk, CPU, bit-mapped screen, keyboard, and mouse), but should also be capable of communicating with other hosts through the Ether- net (10-mb). There should be at least 2Mbytes of main store and 50Mbytes to 100Mbytes of disk attached to the CPU. Some of the selection criteria are: 1 Compatibility with an Interlisp-D program (we have a current research project developed in this environ- ment). 2 Compatibility with Common-Lisp. This seems like a good standard to aim future projects at. 3 Compatibility with TCP/IP protocols on the Ethernet, especially a 4.2BSD UNIX system. We have 12 hosts that conform to this standard. We would like to be able to do file transfers, mail, rlogin, and distributed pro- cessing over the network using applications based on the TCP/IP protocols. 4 As mentioned we would like to run more than Lisp on the workstation. The other (current) cantidates are: Smalltalk and Prolog. An actual UNIX may also be an asset. 5 An `open system' is highly desirable - the Ethernet and its protocols should be standard; the Lisp should be standard (Common-Lisp); addon boards should be standard (Multibus or VME bus). If there are private protocols or interfaces they should be well described and the documentation should be available. 7 The noise factor will be considered. Is the user inter- face equipment (keyboard, screen, and mouse) seperable from the noisy CPU and disk? What is the sound level of the complete system? In addition to the price list showing the options available to us (and any discounts!) we would like to have a response to the criteria listed above. We also need to know how much you charge for what kinds of maintenance (we would really like to do our own maintenace to the chip level), where your nearest service center is, and what sorts of ser- vice arrangements could be made. If there are any questions about this Request for Quo- tation please do not hesitate to contact Steven Sutphen (403)432-4768, or via USENET ihnp4!alberta!steve
shebs@bcsaic.UUCP (stan shebs) (06/12/85)
In article <534@alberta.UUCP> steve@alberta.UUCP (Steve Sutphen) asks for: > 1 Compatibility with an Interlisp-D program (we have a > current research project developed in this environ- > ment). > > 2 Compatibility with Common-Lisp. This seems like a good > standard to aim future projects at. The only machines that run both Interlisp and Common Lisp are 10's, 20's, and Vaxen. The two dialects are quite dissimilar, and your chances of getting Interlisp on a Bolix or Common Lisp on a Dolphin are pretty close to zero... stan shebs
hemphill@dreacad.UUCP (hemphill) (06/16/85)
> In article <534@alberta.UUCP> steve@alberta.UUCP (Steve Sutphen) asks for: > > > 1 Compatibility with an Interlisp-D program (we have a > > current research project developed in this environ- > > ment). > > > > 2 Compatibility with Common-Lisp. This seems like a good > > standard to aim future projects at. > > The only machines that run both Interlisp and Common Lisp are 10's, > 20's, and Vaxen. The two dialects are quite dissimilar, and your > chances of getting Interlisp on a Bolix or Common Lisp on a Dolphin > are pretty close to zero... > > stan shebs Having been a DEC-20 Interlisp site for a number of years, we have recently switched to Symbolics machines, and are in general quite pleased with them. The Interlisp compatiblility package (available as optional software) allows one to use most software developed in Interlisp although we are not developing any new stuff in Interlisp. With the eventual arrival of the full Symbolics Common Lisp environment (the process has begun with Rel 6.0) we will be doing all our developemnt in Common Lisp. G++ -- Gavin Hemphill, Defence Research Establishment Atlantic UUCP: {garfield,utcsrgv,dalcs}!dreacad!hemphill ARPA: hemphill@nrl-aic
root@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein) (06/19/85)
Re: Claim that there is no LISP machine that runs both INTERLISP and COMMON LISP... I dunno, I would check real carefully with Xerox about their plans for Common Lisp under Interlisp (on their 1108s.) I thought someone at Parc indicated to me that was at least an intention in the near future if not a current project. I would strongly suggest trying a note to INFO-1100@SUMEX-AIM (ARPA) which will probably be *much* more rewarding than the telephone. -Barry Shein, Boston University
gxm@raybed2.UUCP (GERARD MAYER) (07/18/85)
Xerox is working on Common LISP under Inter LISP. Look for demo of some functions at IJCAI. Call your local Xerox AI sales person for more information on projected release dates. Gerard Mayer Raytheon Research Division uucp ..linus!raybed2!gxm