Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!nbires!hao!ames!pioneer!eugene
From: eugene@pioneer.arpa (Eugene N. Miya)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Editing on Crays
Message-ID: <5288@ames.arpa>
Date: 27 Feb 88 21:12:02 GMT
References: <9495@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> <3815@megaron.arizona.edu> <235@amelia.nas.nasa.gov> <416@micropen>
Sender: usenet@ames.arpa
Reply-To: eugene@pioneer.UUCP (Eugene N. Miya)
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
Lines: 27

In article <416@micropen> dave@micropen (David F. Carlson) writes:
>I know most of these CRAYs are used in DoD research on important things like
>bombs and SDI, but my running an EDITOR (ie. slow interactive process)
>on a CRAY--presumably payed for with my tax dollars.  Ouch!  Can't you
>find any good emacs for a VT100 on a VAX11/780 to run twenty editor jobs?
>(I bet every government facility has tons of workhorse CPU for editor
>sessions rather than that premium CRAY time.)

Actually most Crays (either 1/Xs, or 2s) aren't used by DOD any more.
(Note between LANL and LLNL, there's only 1/4 of a Cray 2 for over a
dozen Crays between them) and we are all scambling for the first Ys.

In defense of Marty's comment about editing, let me say there's nothing
like trying to debug BIG, parallel processing research programs like
having a reasonable editor (try 20 MB text files).  Yes, we all believe
there is a better way, but we are all uncertain of what is.

Write us some distributed applications (portable across heterogeneous
machines).  You can at least keep Unix, ignore those COS, CTSS, VSOS
sites. ;-)

From the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@ames-aurora.ARPA
  "You trust the `reply' command with all those different mailers out there?"
  "Send mail, avoid follow-ups.  If enough, I'll summarize."
  {uunet,hplabs,hao,ihnp4,decwrl,allegra,tektronix}!ames!aurora!eugene