mcculley@alien.enet.dec.com (05/30/90)
In article <2832@crash.cts.com>, jca@pnet01.cts.com (John C. Archambeau) writes... >chip@tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) writes: >>[[ Followups to comp.arch ]] >> >>Competent C compilers can be written in small model. I once worked on >>a C compiler that ran on a PDP-11, which as everyone knows, is limited >>to 64K of data under most (all?) Unix implementations. > >Which brings forth the argument in favor of progress. How many people >actually use PDP-11's anymore? IMHO not as many as should be. :-( But still enough to be funding my salary. :-) Digital is still shipping enough PDP-11s to justify introducing the new PDP-11/94 (Unibus) and MicroPDP-11/93 (Q-bus) systems. FWIW I'm an engineer so I don't know the number of ships but I just spent some time testing and doing o/s development to support the two new PDP-11 models that were announced three weeks ago, at DECUS in New Orleans. My opinion is that they represent progress, in one particular niche. Talk about progress, the step from 16 bit systems to 32 bits is generally regarded to be progress, but then you carry more bits and more registers and generally more context and overhead, it's not clear that it's progress when you try to make quick context switches and fast response. To measure progress you have to know where you're going - and when you get there, you'll probably find somebody has already been there with a PDP! Bruce McCulley RSX-11 Software Development Digital Equipment Corp.