Xref: utzoo comp.sys.dec:921 comp.arch:7861 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!vixie From: vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul A Vixie) Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec,comp.arch Subject: Re: DECstation 3100 info. Message-ID: Date: 16 Jan 89 07:03:18 GMT References: <558@oracle.UUCP> Sender: vixie@decwrl.dec.com Organization: DEC Western Research Lab Lines: 70 In-reply-to: rbradbur@hqpyr1.oracle.UUCP's message of 15 Jan 89 00:57:26 GMT In <558@oracle.UUCP> rbradbur@hqpyr1.oracle.UUCP (Robert Bradbury) writes: # There is no excuse for this. Vendors of large application programs [...] # are getting very tired of vendors of hardware who can't get their act # together to standardize on ABI's. I'm sure there are people at MIPSCO just hopping from one foot to the other wishing there were an ABI for their chip. I can only guess that they thought everybody would follow the a.out and *.o and syscall assignments that they used in their UMIPS and SYSV products; however, various teams of gurus who had these chips and/or machines handed to them with the directive: "port UNIX to it and make it look as much like our other products as you can and get it done in time for COMDEX" just did not have ABI's in mind. I'm not happy about it, but I do understand it. Even if they had ABI's in mind, could they have agreed? Would they have let OSF or MIPSCO mediate? Binding arbitration among competitors? I'll believe it when I see it. I'd love to see it, of course, but I'd be careful about threatening to hold my breath until it happens. # Sequent and Pyramid have demonstrated that you *can* provide a single # environment which supports both BSD and SV system calls. The 88000 # group is wisely starting out up front by standardizing on an ABI. I applaud the 88000 people. So far the marketing (and an ABI is _marketing_, folks!) of the 88000 has been fantastic. It may well be the first counter- example to what I asserted above about competitors being polite to eachother. But the 88000 is not yet taking the world by storm, while the MIPSCO chip _is_. Sequent and Pyramid both have great products, but since Pyramid runs a closed architechture and since Sequent is incompatible with all other NS32000 and 80386 machines, I don't see them as luminaries of the cause of the ABI. # MIPS & DEC are shooting themselves in the foot by not providing [...] ABI's Wait, wait. MIPS may be shooting themselves in the foot, I don't know. But as Gettys pointed out in another article in this forum, DEC's MIPS-based machine is as compatible as possible with the rest of what DEC sells. If you have a VAX/Ultrix port of Oracle, chances are you'll have little trouble making it run on the 3100. Also, DEC has always provided as much upward binary compatibility as they could -- many VMS 1.0 binaries (and RSX-11 binaries, for that matter) will run on the latest VMS, and most Ultrix 1.0 (or BSD 4.2) binaries will run on the latest Ultrix. I'm interested in hearing from anyone who thinks that DEC is about to change that policy. # Yes, research people would like BSD 4.3. A great environment for research, # but not one that can support a high performance RDBMS due to its lack of # robust IPC primitives. I'll take a real O.S. that conforms to the SVID # any day of the week. (Groan.) Have a look at the latest CSRG proposal for IPC if you want to see "robust". The less said about SVID IPC, the better. :-(. # I'm not in management at Oracle, but I suspect my opinions are close to # management's given the amount of money we have to spend to support products # for vendors who can't get it organized to standardize binary interfaces. # # Robert Bradbury # Oracle Corporation # (206) 782-9474 hplabs!oracle!rbradbur Standard disclaimer: I don't speak for DEC, I just work here. If any of my words above are quoted, please include this paragraph. -- Paul Vixie Work: vixie@decwrl.dec.com decwrl!vixie +1 415 853 6600 Play: paul@vixie.sf.ca.us vixie!paul +1 415 864 7013