andy@carcoar.Stanford.EDU (Andy Freeman) (06/11/88)
In article <20128@beta.UUCP> jlg@beta.UUCP (Jim Giles) writes: >And (in spite of suggestions) there is NO commercial machine presently >available which even takes 'hints' about the data usage patterns. Not long ago, the Los Alamos and Livermore people would write operating systems; now they won't even modify them. > Even >if such a machine DID exist, the best it could do is tie the speed of >the non-VM code which does it's own asynchronous paging. In the best of all possible worlds, this is true. The typical Los Alamos/Livermore programmer is not as good as their stars, so I'd bet that the typical programmer could write more efficient programs on a hint-using VM system than they currently write using program-specific I/O. In the former case, the typical program gets more benefit from the star's programming talents. -andy UUCP: {arpa gateways, decwrl, uunet, rutgers}!polya.stanford.edu!andy ARPA: andy@polya.stanford.edu (415) 329-1718/723-3088 home/cubicle
eugene@pioneer.arpa (Eugene N. Miya) (06/11/88)
In article <22467@labrea.Stanford.EDU> andy@carcoar.Stanford.EDU (Andy Freeman) writes: >In article <20128@beta.UUCP> jlg@beta.UUCP (Jim Giles) writes: >>And (in spite of suggestions) there is NO commercial machine presently >>available which even takes 'hints' about the data usage patterns. > >Not long ago, the Los Alamos and Livermore people would write >operating systems; now they won't even modify them. Today, we had a small argument on this (Marty Fouts noblely defending U*x), (I'm getting too old for OS arguments) because of an article in the Livermore Valley paper on D.F.'s comments about their new operating system NLTSS (cost $5-10 M). So they do write them. Now I know that Marty reads this group and I know Dick Watson also reads this group. I wish that the discussion had not been so lop sided (6.5 : 1 defending non-Unix OSes on supers). I think this type of OS work needs to be done [Greg Chesson has defended the LINCS protocol in public as experimental work needing support]. This is diverging from architectures so we should migrate this process to the appropriate news group.... Or maybe this is the reason why process migration is soo hard ;-). Another gross generalization from --eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@aurora.arc.nasa.gov resident cynic at the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers: "Mailers?! HA!", "If my mail does not reach you, please accept my apology." {uunet,hplabs,ncar,decwrl,allegra,tektronix}!ames!aurora!eugene "Send mail, avoid follow-ups. If enough, I'll summarize."