Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!bu-cs!encore
From: alan@encore (Alan Langerman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.encore
Subject: Re: Encore's Multiple OSs
Message-ID: <10452@encore.Encore.COM>
Date: 26 Nov 89 23:53:09 GMT
References: <8911251606.AA03791@ub.D.UMN.EDU>
Sender: news@Encore.COM
Reply-To: alan@encore (Alan Langerman)
Organization: Encore Computer Corp
Lines: 72

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.

Alan