andrew@stl.stc.co.uk (Andrew Macpherson) (03/08/87)
Beyond the name, and a fourth hand comment attributed to a German CS
researcher (I don't even know which) that 'S1' is the coming thing, I
know nothing. Any pointers to literature, or reviews by users would be
a help.
In view of the generality of this request, it would probably be best if
I were to publish a synopsis of replies a month after this message is
published by the moderator, so please mail me your replies! Thanks
--
Regards,
Andrew Macpherson. <andrew@tcom.stc.co.uk> {backbone}!ukc!stc!andrewlas@sdcsvax.UUCP (03/10/87)
S1 may be pure vaporware (excuse me, vapourware). In June '85 I saw a
promotional leaflet for S1 which announced in large letters "UNIX IS A
DINOSAUR." This was followed by a series of bombastic (wild, probably
exaggerated) claims for functionality and performance mixed with a
viscious diatribe against UNIX. I have no great love for UNIX, but
the intensity of the criticism was not justified.
regards
Larry
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BRITANNUS (shocked): Caesar, this is not proper.
THEODOTUS (outraged): How?
CAESAR (recovering his self-possession):
Pardon him Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that
the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
(_Caesar and Cleopatra_, Act II - G. B. Shaw)
Larry A. Shurr
cbatt!osu-eddie!apr!las (preferred, alternates: {cbosgd,ihnp4}!cbcp1!las)
Darrell Long
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, C-014
University of California, San Diego
La Jolla, California 92093
ARPA: Darrell@Beowulf.UCSD.EDU
UUCP: sdcsvax!beowulf!darrelldarrell@sdcsvax.UUCP (03/10/87)
In article <2827@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>, andrew@stl.stc.co.uk (Andrew Macpherson) writes: > Beyond the name, and a fourth hand comment attributed to a German CS > researcher (I don't even know which) that 'S1' is the coming thing, I > know nothing. Any pointers to literature, or reviews by users would be > a help. > The S1 operating system is a (claimed) product of Multi Soulutions Inc. Essentially, it's a vegomatic vaporware operating system which supposedly fixes the (so-called) deficiencies in UNIX such as lack of a record-oriented file type. I haven't heard from them in a while, but when they were active all they seem to do is sit around and malign UNIX and say how great and worderful S1 was going to be and that it was going to run on anything. I have never found a single product that uses it. I have doubts that if it does exist that it ever worked well. The president of the company John Littlemind (from the Planet X) wrote a "opposing viewpoint" article in an Electronics feature on UNIX a few years back. What was really amazing about his rebuttal was that the problems he cited had either never existed in UNIX, or had been fixed in standard versions of UNIX that way predated the article. For example, he indicated that UNIX could never work in a multiprocessor enviroment where the processors were doing equal shares of the work rather than having one CPU and relegating trivial I/O tasks. I thought that was so amusing that the quote was glued to the front of our Dual Processor VAX 780 (Purdue-mods) running 4.2. The original strategy for multiprocessor UNIX was layed out in 1975 in a paper at the Naval Postgraduate School, which was long before John, or most people could spell UNIX. What is especially distressing, is that there is a architecture research project developing a computer called "S1" which is much more creditable. -Ron
darrell@sdcsvax.UUCP (03/11/87)
Let me add to Ron's comments about the "other" S-1.
The S-1 project is a US Navy funded attempt to make a supercomputer out
at LLNL. They are on the ARPAnet (sci.space is gatewayed thru an S-1
machine) and Usenet (I thought they would reply). The original S-1
project developed (as I recall) the SCALD
systems for CAD, for the purposes of a computer 16 times a Cray-1 in
power using 16 Cray class (36-bit addressing, but 72-bit data word)
CPUs connected via a cross-bar switch running a Unix like operating
system named Amber. The architecture was like a DEC-10/20. They went
from a Mark I design to a Mark II and I most recently heard of the IIa,
and they are going to a Mark III design in VLSI. Some people would say
they are little better than the other S1. You can read a little about
S-1 in the book entitled "Star Warriors." The project was proposed in
the late 1970s by Lowell Wood of LLNL. It seems by the time the S-1
gets completed, Cray-1s will be sitting on our desks, and Cray will mean
something else.
Star Wars is a trademark of Lucasfilm, Ltd.
>From the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
--eugene miya
NASA Ames Research Center
eugene@ames-aurora.ARPA
"You trust the `reply' command with all those different mailers out there?"
"Send mail, avoid follow-ups. If enough, I'll summarize."
{hplabs,hao,ihnp4,decwrl,allegra,tektronix,menlo70}!ames!aurora!eugene