Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!aglew From: aglew@crhc.uiuc.edu (Andy Glew) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: UNIX Message-ID: Date: 15 Nov 90 22:53:52 GMT References: <11613@alice.att.com> <4868@trantor.harris-atd.com> <4876@trantor.harris-atd.com> <2925@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> Sender: news@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News) Organization: Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Lines: 33 In-Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM's message of 15 Nov 90 14:37:41 GMT >... "production system which broke new grou[n]d," then you would have to >include the Intel 432. > > Intel tried to do 32 bit data and object oriented hardware about two >decades before it was popular. Actually if they had the resources, I >believe that today's processes would make this part fast enough to be >useful, and salable in a niche market for doing object oriented stuff. > >[bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)] Q: what niche market does object oriented stuff? Researchers probably need not apply - although several parallel computer companies have made money off the parallel research market, the type of problems that are attacked by parallelism tend to have more money thrown at them than the type of problems solved by objects. (Disprove by showing a budget breakdown for the NSF and other funders, with funds available for machine purchase.) Security? Maybe - but security, at least, has moved away from complexity in the hardware, and towards secure OSes running on stock hardware. Fault tolerant/reliable systems? Maybe - but Tandem's recent UNIX based systems may indicate the trend for FT to run on stock hardware as well. Although, to take the other point of view - the Intel i960 really very much is a descendant of the 432. With the various problems that led to poor performance fixed. -- Andy Glew, a-glew@uiuc.edu [get ph nameserver from uxc.cso.uiuc.edu:net/qi]