mark@mips.COM (Mark G. Johnson) (11/13/90)
Looks like folks are now beginning to credit the development
of UNIX to Kernighan and Ritchie, but I thought the principal
investigators were *Thompson* and Ritchie. Did something change?
<9333@b11.ingr.com>, lhughes@b11.ingr.com (Lawrence Hughes)
$ Welcome to the wonderful world of multi-megabyte executables
$ that barely fit in 2 MB systems, barely crawl on 25 MHz CPUs
$ and won't even run on any known diskette system. Compliments of
$ brothers Kernigan and Ritchie.
<PCG.90Nov10145452@odin.cs.aber.ac.uk>, pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
# Poor Kernighan and Ritchie must be turning in their graves -- oops
# sorry, they are fortunately still with us :-). V7 Unix was designed to
# run efficiently on a 64KB adress space machine.
<1106@banyan.UUCP>, gil@banyan.UUCP (Gil Pilz@Eng@Banyan)
% It's not _that_ hard to come up with a NEW system that is simple and
% elegant when you're tucked away in some lab with no one watching you
% (K&R deserve kudos for designing one that was also portable and widely
% usefull). It's quite another thing to be working on an existing
--
-- Mark Johnson
MIPS Computer Systems, 930 E. Arques M/S 2-02, Sunnyvale, CA 94086
(408) 524-8308 mark@mips.com {or ...!decwrl!mips!mark}gil@banyan.UUCP (Gil Pilz@Eng@Banyan) (11/14/90)
In article <43115@mips.mips.COM> mark@mips.COM (Mark G. Johnson) writes: >Looks like folks are now beginning to credit the development >of UNIX to Kernighan and Ritchie, but I thought the principal >investigators were *Thompson* and Ritchie. Did something change? Ooops ! Mea Culpa (shows what happens when you just grab text) I still stand by my basic arguement, though. As long as we have a market driven by simplistic enumeration of system "features" we're going to get bulky systems comprised of poorly integrated, hacked-on kludges to what once were a fairly elegant and simple systems (we could start all over again with . . say MACH, and in 5 years or less we'd have another, slightly different, gigantic mess) That is, UNLESS we can "sell" a new buzz-concept: the Reduced Feature Set System (All the advantages of RISC only now at the system level ! Build your OWN features quickly and easily through the simple combination of these basic features ! Prototype and test new software with speed and ease !) . . . naaah, it'll never work. "sometimes it makes me sad when I think of what gets wasted the time spent, the lives lost the dishes never tasted" - sam hill Gilbert Pilz Jr. "I don't believe in nihilism, anarchy is too confining gil@banyan.com for me, I have no opinion about apathy." - g. panfile
dmr@alice.att.com (Dennis Ritchie) (11/14/90)
I read, > Looks like folks are now beginning to credit the development > of UNIX to Kernighan and Ritchie, but I thought the principal > investigators were *Thompson* and Ritchie. Did something change? The differences between Kernighan Ritchie Thompson are real but very subtle. We all look alike (middle aged with scruffy graying beards). Note these distinctions: -- Kernighan is slimmest, Ritchie middlest, Thompson heaviest in body build -- Ritchie got contacts a couple of years ago and so is the only current non-glasses wearer -- Thompson wouldn't touch netnews with a pole, Kernighan secretly gets misc.invest and misc.taxes mailed to him, Ritchie reads it more than is good for him and occasionally contributes -- Ritchie is the only one who has met five people who have appeared on David Letterman (Penn, Teller, Rob Pike, Mayor Koch, and the guy who raised the biggest hog in Ohio) -- Kernighan has written ten times as much readable prose as has Ritchie, Ritchie ten times as much as Thompson. It's tempting to say that the reverse proportions hold for code, but in fact Kernighan and Ritchie are more nearly tied and Thompson wipes us both out. Dennis
pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) (11/14/90)
On 13 Nov 90 00:35:07 GMT, mark@mips.COM (Mark G. Johnson) said: mark> Looks like folks are now beginning to credit the development mark> of UNIX to Kernighan and Ritchie, but I thought the principal mark> investigators were *Thompson* and Ritchie. Did something change? From what I understand, Thompson and Ritchie wrote the Unix Kernel, mostly by themselves, up to V7 included (one did IO, the other the rest). But a crew of various colleagues of those two wrote most the of UNIX utilities; Bourne the shell, Kernighan Weinberger coded AWK (I think mostly Kernighan) with design help from Aho, the late Ossanna [tn]roff, Bourne the V7 shell, Kernighan again produced ditroff and pic, Ritchie himself the first C compiler, Johnson the pcc, Lesk a number of text processing thingies, and many others that I omit for brevity. Kernighan, Ritchie (and Pike) are the names most frequently associated with Unix because they wrote the C language book and the Unix environment book on which most UNIX programmers start. Therefore they have enjoyed more public exposure than Thompson, which (I seem to remember) arguably considers UNIX mostly a development system for chess machines... :-) As far I can see, the fundamental Unix flavour is from Thompson, the fundamental C flavour is from Ritchie. -- Piercarlo Grandi | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber.cs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk
chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano) (11/14/90)
In article <11613@alice.att.com>, dmr@alice.att.com (Dennis Ritchie) writes: > -- Ritchie is the only one who has met five people who have > appeared on David Letterman (Penn, Teller, Rob Pike, Mayor Koch, and > the guy who raised the biggest hog in Ohio) What was Rob Pike doing on Letterman? Has he got show-biz in his blood since his successful debut as a SIGGRAPH game show host? And to keep this thread valid for comp.arch, what were David Letterman's Top Ten computer architectures? -- Chuck Musciano ARPA : chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com Harris Corporation Usenet: ...!uunet!x102a!trantor!chuck PO Box 37, MS 3A/1912 AT&T : (407) 727-6131 Melbourne, FL 32902 FAX : (407) 729-2537 A good newspaper is never good enough, but a lousy newspaper is a joy forever. -- Garrison Keillor
chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano) (11/15/90)
In article <4868@trantor.harris-atd.com>, I write: > And to keep this > thread valid for comp.arch, what were David Letterman's Top Ten computer > architectures? And Ed Borasky sends me: Ed Borasky's Top Ten Computer Architectures: 1. Babbage's Analytical Engine (first computer) 2. The IAS machines (ILLIAC I, JOHHNIAC, etc. -- the Von Neumann/Goldstine/Burks designs) 3. The IBM 7030 (STRETCH) -- the first supercomputer 4. System/360 -- the first GENERAL PURPOSE COMPUTER (not specialized for commercial or scientific jobs) 5. The PDP-8 -- the first commercially successful minicomputer 6. The FPS AP-120B -- the best array processor, first LONG INSTRUCTION WORD machine 7. The Cray X-MP -- the most successful and best TRUE SUPERCOMPUTER 8. The Connection machine -- the most innovative massively parallel SIMD machine 9. Intel's Touchstone Delta -- the best MIMD design to date. 10. The MOSTEK 6502 -- brains of the Apple 2, Commodore 64 and LOTS of video games! Those are MY nominees; clearly others will have favorites. Conspicuosly missing are today's RISC machines (RS/6000, SPARC, MIPS). If you start the list at 1980 you would have to include them, but I go back further than many on the net. Ed Borasky
herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com (11/15/90)
In article <11613@alice.att.com>, dmr@alice.att.com (Dennis Ritchie) writes: > I read, > > > Looks like folks are now beginning to credit the development > > of UNIX to Kernighan and Ritchie, but I thought the principal > > investigators were *Thompson* and Ritchie. Did something change? > > The differences between Kernighan Ritchie Thompson are real > but very subtle. We all look alike (middle aged with scruffy > graying beards). Note these distinctions: > > -- Kernighan is slimmest, Ritchie middlest, Thompson heaviest > in body build > -- Ritchie got contacts a couple of years ago and so is the > only current non-glasses wearer > -- Thompson wouldn't touch netnews with a pole, Kernighan > secretly gets misc.invest and misc.taxes mailed to him, > Ritchie reads it more than is good for him and occasionally > contributes > -- Ritchie is the only one who has met five people who have > appeared on David Letterman (Penn, Teller, Rob Pike, Mayor Koch, and > the guy who raised the biggest hog in Ohio) > -- Kernighan has written ten times as much readable prose as has > Ritchie, Ritchie ten times as much as Thompson. It's tempting > to say that the reverse proportions hold for code, but > in fact Kernighan and Ritchie are more nearly tied > and Thompson wipes us both out. > > > Dennis Dennis, I was once talking with a tech on the iRMX86 help line at Intel and suggested that I would rather do my embedded product in c than in PLM86. He said, "I used to work for Bell Labs out in New Jersey. Kernighan and Ritchie are flakes who run around outside in sandals and no socks in the middle of the winter." It's impossible to represent his tone of voice, but it was obvious he thought he was giving me the last word on the usefulness of c as a programming language. dan herrick herrickd@astro.pc.ab.com
davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) (11/15/90)
In article <4876@trantor.harris-atd.com> chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano) writes: | Ed Borasky's Top Ten Computer Architectures: Since I don't know the selection criteria, I dare not disagree with this, but I believe that if you are looking at "production system which broke new groupd," then you would have to include the Intel 432. Intel tried to do 32 bit data and object oriented hardware about two decades before it was popular. Actually if they had the resources, I believe that today's processes would make this part fast enough to be useful, and salable in a niche market for doing object oriented stuff. I confess that I see no hope there will be unused resources in Intel's future, so I'm not holding my breath. The concepts were way ahead of their time, though, in both advance of the market, and advance of the processes which would make the chip reasonably fast. -- bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen) VMS is a text-only adventure game. If you win you can use unix.
EAF@.Prime.COM (11/16/90)
Ditto the 960XA (BiiN) architecture. Ed
aglew@crhc.uiuc.edu (Andy Glew) (11/16/90)
>... "production system which broke new grou[n]d," then you would have to >include the Intel 432. > > Intel tried to do 32 bit data and object oriented hardware about two >decades before it was popular. Actually if they had the resources, I >believe that today's processes would make this part fast enough to be >useful, and salable in a niche market for doing object oriented stuff. > >[bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)] Q: what niche market does object oriented stuff? Researchers probably need not apply - although several parallel computer companies have made money off the parallel research market, the type of problems that are attacked by parallelism tend to have more money thrown at them than the type of problems solved by objects. (Disprove by showing a budget breakdown for the NSF and other funders, with funds available for machine purchase.) Security? Maybe - but security, at least, has moved away from complexity in the hardware, and towards secure OSes running on stock hardware. Fault tolerant/reliable systems? Maybe - but Tandem's recent UNIX based systems may indicate the trend for FT to run on stock hardware as well. Although, to take the other point of view - the Intel i960 really very much is a descendant of the 432. With the various problems that led to poor performance fixed. -- Andy Glew, a-glew@uiuc.edu [get ph nameserver from uxc.cso.uiuc.edu:net/qi]
khb@chiba.Eng.Sun.COM (Keith Bierman fpgroup) (11/16/90)
In article <4876@trantor.harris-atd.com> chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano) writes:
...
Ed Borasky's Top Ten Computer Architectures:
9. Intel's Touchstone Delta -- the best MIMD design to date.
...
How is the Touchstone Delta _qualitatively_ different than the
original Cosmic Cube by Sietz et al ? It certainly is faster, and has
more processors (and snazzier ones at that) .... but the other
machines listed seem to be attempts to chose seminal machines ....
else one would expect the S/360 to be a 3090 (or whatever), the XMP
with a YMP, etc.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Keith H. Bierman kbierman@Eng.Sun.COM | khb@chiba.Eng.Sun.COM
SMI 2550 Garcia 12-33 | (415 336 2648)
Mountain View, CA 94043peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) (11/16/90)
In article <4876@trantor.harris-atd.com> chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano) writes: > 10. The MOSTEK 6502 -- brains of the Apple 2, Commodore 64 and LOTS of > video games! How about the COSMAC 1802, the brains of Voyager and the first microprocessor to achieve artificial intelligence (in one of the Star Trek movies)? -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' +1 713 274 5180. 'U` peter@ferranti.com
sxr@cs.purdue.EDU (Saul Rosen) (11/17/90)
In article <43115@mips.mips.COM> mark@mips.COM (Mark G. Johnson) writes: >Looks like folks are now beginning to credit the development >of UNIX to Kernighan and Ritchie, but I thought the principal >investigators were *Thompson* and Ritchie. Did something change? > I don't read this newsgroup that thoroughly, so I didn't catch the three articles that Mark Johnson quotes in which the inventors of UNIX are incorrectly identified. I am pleased that he has taken the time to post a correction. Note that in Kernighan and Pike's "The Unix Programming Environment" the authors state that the first version of Unix was written in 1969 by "Ken Thompson, with ideas and support from Rudd Canaday, Doug McIlroy, and Dennis Ritchie" and that "In 1973 Ritchie and Thompson rewrote the Unix kernel in C..." I am surprised and sometimes distressed by the number of incorrect statements about the history of computing that find their way into print (or into network postings.) Saul Rosen
chip@chinacat.Unicom.COM (Chip Rosenthal) (11/20/90)
>> 10. The MOSTEK 6502 >How about the COSMAC 1802 In any case, it was the MOS Technology 6502, not Mostek. -- Chip Rosenthal 512-482-8260 | We was raising insurance premiums, ma. Unicom Systems Development | We was spreading fear of arson. <chip@chinacat.Unicom.COM> | - Michelle Shocked
colwell@omews35.intel.com (Robert Colwell) (11/27/90)
In article <10348@sunquest.UUCP> terry@venus.sunquest.com (Terry R. Friedrichsen) writes: >I guess this just proves that Intel hires software folks with >the same unrefined taste as the folks who design their hardware. This is not true. You can have good taste when you're hired, but you have to promise to get rid of it in an appropriate amount of time. Intel is very reasonable about these things. For instance, you can still drink expensive wine, but you have to promise not to enjoy it. Bob Colwell mipon2!colwell@intel.com 503-696-4550 Intel Corp. JF1-19 5200 NE Elam Young Parkway Hillsboro, Oregon 97124