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From: ingoldsb@ctycal.UUCP (Terry Ingoldsby)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Graphics Primitives
Summary: Don't forget VMS
Message-ID: <513@ctycal.UUCP>
Date: 20 Nov 90 19:26:00 GMT
References: <0093F6A8.35049DA0@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU> <11030@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <42992@mips.mips.COM>
Organization: The City of Calgary, Ab
Lines: 30

In article <42992@mips.mips.COM>, mash@mips.COM (John Mashey) writes:
...
> This is a worthy instance of a kind of design issue that has often
> come up: how do you decide what to include in a chip,
> and specifically, how much (that ought to be) software
> gets included, and how well does that work?  There's been a lot of marketing
> lately about "putting the human interface on a chip", whatever that means.
...
> Other examples where hardware was designed with very specific
> languages or other software in mind:
> 
> 1) Burroughs B5500 (for Algol): I'd call this successful in many
...
> 2) Intel 432: not so successful.

Aren't you forgetting one of the most successful symbiotic relationships?
I speak of VAX/VMS.  I took a VMS Internals course a few years ago, and
was struck by the frequency with which the VAX architecture just happened
to be exactly what was needed for VMS.  I finally concluded that if VAX
was not designed for VMS, then certainly the hardware architects had a
lot of input from the VMS people.  

Can anyone confirm or negate my suspicions?



-- 
  Terry Ingoldsby                ctycal!ingoldsb%cpsc.ucalgary.ca
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