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From: guy@sun.uucp (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Re: uninitialized data
Message-ID: <2874@sun.uucp>
Date: Sat, 12-Oct-85 15:13:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.2874
Posted: Sat Oct 12 15:13:19 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 15-Oct-85 07:18:04 EDT
References: <436@uvm-cs.UUCP> <164@tulane.UUCP> <200@mips.UUCP> <1714@peora.UUCP>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 19

> Just because someone's implementation of an architecture was unsuccessful
> doesn't mean the architecture is somehow invalidated.  Look at Multics vs.
> Unix.

UNIX does not (in general) support mapping files into a process' address
space, nor does it support dynamic linking, or a multi-ring privilege
scheme.  As such, UNIX is not an implementation of the same (software)
architecture as Multics.

The point is still valid in general; however, I know of no implementation of
an iAPX432-style architecture which has become a general success.  Either
nobody's done it right yet, or it isn't as good a general-purpose
architecture as the currently dominant architectural style (which could, I
guess, be considered descendants either of the 360 or its PDP-11 offshoot -
there's probably a machine of that style which preceded the 360, but I'm not
enough of a historian to know what it was).  There is not enough data to say
which is the case.

	Guy Harris