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From: len@elxsi.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Supercomputer Unix decisions
Message-ID: <420@elxsi.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 10-Jun-87 20:19:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: elxsi.420
Posted: Wed Jun 10 20:19:21 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Jun-87 06:37:34 EDT
References: <3659@spool.WISC.EDU> <743@geac.UUCP> <4679@columbia.UUCP>
Reply-To: len@elxsi.UUCP (Len Mills)
Organization: ELXSI Super Computers, San Jose
Lines: 41

In article <4679@columbia.UUCP> francus@cheshire.columbia.edu.UUCP (Yoseff Francus) writes:
>In article <743@geac.UUCP> daveb@geac.UUCP (Dave Brown) writes:
>>In article <3659@spool.WISC.EDU> lm@cottage.WISC.EDU (Larry McVoy) writes:
>>>Hi there.  (sorry, pete).  Suppose you were to bring up a Unix on a machine
>>>that liked 64 bit ints better than 32 bit ints.  Would you be tempted to
>>>make some of the changes that have already been anticipated - such as making
>>>the time fields be 64 bits in things like the stat buf and timer structs?
>>>Or would you leave things alone so that old code worked?
>
>I seem to recall that when UTS first came out on the Amdahl they
>were using 64 bits per integer.  Eventually they went back to 32
>bits.  If my recollection is correct you may want to find out 
>
>why that decision was made.
>
>******************************************************************
>yoseff f
>In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree
>But only if the NFL to a franchise would agree.

Deja vu!  I seem to remember responding to a similar message some months 
ago, possibly in another newsgroup.

ELXSI went through the same scenario during our development.  We started
out with 64-bit longs and 32-bit ints and 32-bit pointers.  This was fine,
for a while, until folks with third-party applications code came along.

Seems that there is a LOT of code in rather large packages that runs on
a lot of machines, all of which have pointers and longs of the same number
of bits.  We may all know that this assumption limits portability, and
all machine architectures do not agree with that of the VAX, but try and
justify your actions to a real, money-paying customer who is hurting
due to the difficulty of porting a critical package.

Of course, we changed.  Nowadays int, long, and pointer all are 32-bits
and there is a new, absolutely non-portable thingy called a long long
which is 64-bits. Sigh.

Such is the price of progress.

Len