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From: eugene@pioneer.arpa (Eugene Miya N.)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: What should be in hardware but isn't (LISP hardware?)
Message-ID: <2936@ames.arpa>
Date: Wed, 30-Sep-87 14:04:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: ames.2936
Posted: Wed Sep 30 14:04:06 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 4-Oct-87 21:39:35 EDT
References: <581@l.cc.purdue.edu> <28200048@ccvaxa> <2910@ames.arpa> <2917@ames.arpa> <15393@amdahl.amdahl.com> <2932@ames.arpa>
Sender: usenet@ames.arpa
Reply-To: eugene@pioneer.UUCP (Eugene Miya N.)
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
Lines: 33
Keywords: LISP and Prolog machines

In summary, as requested ( had not intended orginally):
From: johnl@ima.ISC.COM (John R. Levine)

In article <2917@ames.arpa> you write:
>The colleague pointed out that SUN is the only company doing well in
>this arena.  Agree or disagree?  Aren't Symbolics, TI, LMI doing okay?

No, actually they're not.  LMI essentially went bankrupt, the empty shell
of the company was picked up by some Canadians real cheap.  Symbolics is
doing marginally well, but my impression is that's due to software more
than hardware.  Their future may well be in moving their software to
platforms like MIPSco machines or even 386's.

I was around when the T version of Scheme was under construction at Yale,
and got the strong impression that for practically anything you want to
do in Lisp, a little cleverness lets you do it on a conventional processor
with little performance loss compared to a microcoded version in similar
technology.  But for the same money you can certainly buy a lot faster
high volume conventional machine than a special purpose machine like the
Symbolics box.  Looks to me like the RISC philosophy wins again.

John

From: mips!mash@ames (John Mashey)

This must have been sarcastic.
LMI is out of that business.
Symbolics is hurting.
I don't know how the AI part of TI is doing.

Sun's SPARC architecture has only the slightest caterings to LISP,
and I hear from friends that most of the AI folks do NOT use those features,
because it turns out that you can't get at them well thru the O.S.