jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) (11/16/90)
From article <2925@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>, by davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr): > > ... I believe that if you are looking at "production system which > broke new groupd," then you would have to include the Intel 432. The 432 only broke ground in the sense that it was a VLSI chipset. The first production object oriented architecture was, as far as I know, the Plessy System 250, a machine that I am convinced was designed as a deliberate pun on the IBM 360 (subtract 1 from the nonzero digits of the IBM part number to get the Plessy part number, use the same instruction format, but with octal instead of hex, and therefore, only a 24 bit word). The Plessy System 250 was produced in fairly large numbers in the 1970s, but for only one application, control of telephone switching systems. Thus, it is a cousin of the AT&T computers built for similar purposes. Unlike the AT&T machines, it supports a highly secure object oriented architecture. Doug Jones jones@herky.cs.uiowa.edu
EAF@.Prime.COM (11/20/90)
The Burroughs B5000 et al was a very successful commercial, object oriented machine with primitive objects. The S/38 (now AS/400) is an even more successful object oriented machine. While not yet reduced to a microprocessor, it probably could be reduced to a multi-chip set.
colwell@omews35.intel.com (Robert Colwell) (11/27/90)
In article <3215@ns-mx.uiowa.edu> jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) writes: >by davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr): >> >> ... I believe that if you are looking at "production system which >> broke new groupd," then you would have to include the Intel 432. > >The 432 only broke ground in the sense that it was a VLSI chipset. > >The first production object oriented architecture was, as far as I know, >the Plessy System 250... The second sentence excerpted above can be correct without validating the first. The 432 was not a VLSI adaptation of the Plessey 250, and I can't recall any of the 432 papers ever even referring to it. For that matter, I doubt that Plessey would have wanted them to, given how the 432 turned out. Nevertheless, the 432 deserves better than you're giving it. Did the Plessey machine treat the physical processors as abstract data types? (I hope the answer's no, or you'll screw up my rhetoric. Don't have Levy's book with me at the moment...) The 432 did. The 432 also had self-dispatching processors, abstract dispatching port types, and other OS hooks. And Ada support for rendezvous. One could argue that this particular ground might have been better left unbroken, but I don't believe you can make the case that they were following in somebody else's footsteps. Bob Colwell mipon2!colwell@intel.com 503-696-4550 Intel Corp. JF1-19 5200 NE Elam Young Parkway Hillsboro, Oregon 97124