tperala@UB.D.UMN.EDU (Tim Perala) (11/25/89)
I just read an article in Digital Review (Nov 20, 1989), "OSF Outlines Strategy for Multiprocessing OS, OSF/1 Unites Mach with IBM, Encore technologies...". The article goes on to state that OSF will use Encore technology in "their" version of UNIX. I am sure this is great for Encore, but I am wondering just where Encore is heading with its commercial operating systems. Am I remiss to assume some association with OSF and devopment in the direction of OSF compatibility? Currently both BSD and SysV flavors are available with Mach running in- house. Late versions of the BSD UMAX suggest a close association with the Sun/AT&T (UNIX International?) verison of "what UNIX ought to be". I guess I am just somewhat confused about all the "UNIX wars". I am interested in the fact that Encore seems to be in both camps. So enough babbling. Question for Encore.. What is the long range plan for your commercial OSs? Will Mach be marketed (is it already) as a third OS? Will all versions merge to produce the heaven-on-earth we all desire? My opinion, it is better to do one thing right than to do many things half-baked. (Half-baked is the least emotional term I could could think for the current state of the BSD OS. OK, maybe its actually 3/4 baked.) Flames to /dev/null. Let Encore state its intentions... -- Tim Perala Systems Programmer Information Services University of Minnesota, Duluth (218) 726-6122
jdarcy@pinocchio.encore.com (Jeff d'Arcy) (11/26/89)
tperala@UB.D.UMN.EDU (Tim Perala): > What is the long range plan for your commercial OSs? Will Mach be > marketed (is it already) as a third OS? Will all versions merge > to produce the heaven-on-earth we all desire? Well, I'm only a very small part of Encore, but I'll take a stab at answering this before I do my grocery shopping. Encore's intention is to provide the OS and OS features that its customers want. Unfortunately there is no concensus within that group regarding SysV vs. BSD, so we support both. As the industry moves to UI and OSF versions of UNIX so, I'm sure, will Encore. We have no intentions (that I know of) to promote one over the other. One note that may be of interest: UMAX (V and 4.x) are the OS group's responsibility while Mach is under Research. I don't think anyone would say there's any kind of "turf wars", and there is a significant amount of cross-pollination that goes on (we all sit at the same end of the same building), but there is a natural divergence between the two groups' goals and methods. I guess there's a real possibility that we in the OS group will eventually inherit Encore Mach code through OSF while Research continues to do...research. Does this information help anyone? Jeff d'Arcy OS/Network Software Engineer jdarcy@encore.com Encore has provided the medium, but the message remains my own
steve@otto.bf.rmit.oz.au (Steve Iatropoulos) (11/27/89)
tperala@UB.D.UMN.EDU (Tim Perala) writes: >The article goes on to state that OSF will use Encore technology in >"their" version of UNIX. Thats interesting because I have read in a UnixWorld somewhere that Encore has joined Unix International.... Steve -- steve@otto.bf.rmit.oz.au
alan@encore (Alan Langerman) (11/27/89)
In article <8911251606.AA03791@ub.D.UMN.EDU>, tperala@UB (Tim Perala) writes:
[ tperala notes that Encore is contributing to OSF/1, and asks (paraphrased): ]
1. Is there an association between Encore and OSF?
2. Will Encore be influenced towards OSF compatibility?
3. (Statement) Encore provides BSD and SysV with Mach in-house.
Encore's BSD is moving towards Sun/AT&T/UI?.
4. (Statement) Encore seems to be in both camps.
5. What is the long range plan for your commercial OSs?
6. Will Mach be marketed (is it already) as a third OS?
7. Will all versions merge to produce the heaven-on-earth we
all desire?
8. (Statement) Better to do one thing right than many things poorly.
Background: Encore has been offering Mach on the Multimax since the beginning
of 1988. Encore's Research group concluded that Mach was the right operating
system for our Gigamax project, a large-scale tightly-coupled shared-memory
bus-based multiply-hyphenated multiprocessor. We ported Mach to the Multimax
to gain some experience with it before deploying it on the Gigamax. We have
about 25 Multimax sites.
The original offering was a port of CMU's Mach Release 2.0 to the DPC
(remember that?) and APC. This port offered essentially the functionality
provided by CMU: Mach VM and IPC, tasks and threads, Berkeley compatibility
code. Everything except the Berkeley code was brand-new CMU code written
from scratch to run on a multiprocessor. We dubbed this release Mach/0.2.
Subsequently, the Research group parallelized the Berkeley compatibility code
for performance. These are releases 0.4 and 0.5.
We are currently alpha-testing Mach/0.6, which is based on CMU's Mach Release
2.5 and has some new goodies.
OSF is using Encore's Mach/0.6 in combination with filesystem code from the
upcoming 4.4BSD release. The new filesystem code will be parallelized along
the lines of Mach/0.6.
So,
1. Encore is a member of the OSF. Encore and OSF are cooperating on the
development of OSF/1; a number of other vendors are also working with OSF.
2. Encore will provide OSF/1 on the Multimax.
3. Encore's BSD product has many Sun-ish features and a Sun-style release
layout -- true. Mach is available to end-users as well as in-house.
4. In fact, Encore belongs to UI as well as to OSF. Encore has worked hard
with both camps to ensure that the resulting products will work well on
tightly-coupled, shared-memory multiprocessors, for obvious reasons.
5&6. I can't comment on the plans for all of Encore's OS's (we have 14),
but see answer #2.
7. Don't look for a heaven-on-earth merge any time soon. We'd like such
a thing, but the obstacles are significant.
8. While in theory I agree that doing one thing right is better than
doing several things poorly, in practice it seems that not everyone can
agree on what doing one thing right means! It's also true that one man's
Unix is another man's poison: we have customers who despise System V,
other customers who despise BSD, and doubtless a few who despise both.
(Everyone loves Mach, however. :-)
Feel free to call up and order a copy of Mach. The price is $1000. Mach
runs on APCs and XPCs, and can make use of existing UMAX4.2/UMAX4.3
filesystem partitions and many (but not all) binaries.
I work on the Mach project within Encore's Research group. I have no
line-management responsibility. My statements do not represent commitments
on the part of Encore.
Alanprc@erbe.se (Robert Claeson) (11/27/89)
In article <599@otto.bf.rmit.oz.au>, steve@otto.bf.rmit.oz.au (Steve Iatropoulos) writes: > tperala@UB.D.UMN.EDU (Tim Perala) writes: > >The article goes on to state that OSF will use Encore technology in > >"their" version of UNIX. > Thats interesting because I have read in a UnixWorld somewhere that Encore > has joined Unix International.... Encore *is* a member of UNIX International. They are also a member of 88open. Nevertheless, OSF didn't really like what they saw in the IBM AIX kernel, so they decided to go with the Mach kernel. And they quickly found out that Encore has the best Mach-based o/s available and the best parallel processing technology today (not my words, I have a press release from Encore in front of me that describes all this), so, even though Encore is a member of the competing group, they decided to use Encore Mach as the base for the OSF/1 o/s and Encore Multimax computers as the development platform. I believe that your local friendly Encore sales rep. can supply you with further information. -- Robert Claeson E-mail: rclaeson@erbe.se ERBE DATA AB