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From: edw@IUS1.CS.CMU.EDU (Eddie Wyatt)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Universal OS (was Re: Survey of architectures)
Message-ID: <1520@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 25 Apr 88 16:39:48 GMT
References: <2048@gumby.mips.COM> <10504@steinmetz.ge.com> <7657@ames.arpa> <769@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU>
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Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
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 >>First, I would question whether the original poster really
 >>cares about having a single machine implementation and a single
 >>instruction set.  My claim is that most people are not directly
			 	      1. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 >>exposed to these aspects of a computer system and that they
   ^^^^^^
 >>could really care less.
 > 
 > 	Usually this is quite correct, most users only care if it runs the
 > software they want to use and how fast it does this.

  Not really true.  When every you have heterogeneous enviroment, the
user must be concerned.  The is a whole hierarchy of interfacing.

	1. data representation - important when data is shared between
		hosts (is there work needed in transforming the data?)
	2. object code - sun-4 objects are not compatible with sun-3 and
		hence two versions of the objects must be kept.
	3. OS - what is the interface to the signal handler under
		SYS V and BSD!

-- 

Eddie Wyatt 				e-mail: edw@ius1.cs.cmu.edu