Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!dik
From: dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: What is a Mainframe?
Message-ID: <8273@boring.cwi.nl>
Date: 16 Jul 89 22:28:37 GMT
References: <125@ssp1.idca.tds.philips.nl> <20752@winchester.mips.COM> <27637@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <164@bms-at.UUCP> <1604@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> <19834@louie.udel.EDU>
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 18

In article <19834@louie.udel.EDU> nelson@udel.EDU (Mark Nelson) writes:
 > The Cray Operating System (COS) is written entirely in assembler.
 > Since it is essentially a RISC machine (modulo the vector instructions,
 > depending on your personal definition of RISC), and it has 64 bit words,
 > macros are used very heavily, especially for packing and unpacking bit
 > fields in tables.
 > 
 > Cray assembler is written very differently from any other assembler
[Description deleted]
This is very similar to the situation for the CDC Cybers (except the 205).
I think when Cray started his own shop he took along a lot of hard- and
software people along from CDC.  When you know CDCs operating system
NOS/BE (or before that: SCOPE) using COS is no problem.  And now we can
have some discussion about 'look and feel'.
-- 
dik t. winter, cwi, amsterdam, nederland
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