Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!ncar!tank!uxc!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdurb!aglew
From: aglew@mcdurb.Urbana.Gould.COM
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: DDJ article / UNIX vs BS/2
Message-ID: <59300002@mcdurb>
Date: 13 Jan 89 16:00:00 GMT
References: <12872@steinmetz.ge.com>
Lines: 19
Nf-ID: #R:steinmetz.ge.com:12872:mcdurb:59300002:000:1030
Nf-From: mcdurb.Urbana.Gould.COM!aglew    Jan 13 10:00:00 1989


>(something like one of the Gould "firebreathers" which WAS specifically 
>blueprinted for UNIX is a different story).

If by Gould Firebreather you mean a Gould Powernode, well, it wasn't
*exactly* designed to run UNIX. Basically, the Powernodes are a virtual
memory version of the Gould Concept line; the Concept line was the 
preeminent real-time flight-simulator machine of its day (in fact, in
many ways it still is), and typically ran a proprietary operating 
system called MPX.
    The Concept line was basically your brute force fast iron approach:
simple instruction set, simple interrupt structure, fast I/O. It shouldn't
be too surprising that simple and fast runs UNIX as well as a proprietary OS.
    However, the virtual memory and base register extensions of the Powernode
series were pretty much UNIX oriented.

The Gould NPL line of processors was originally designed to run a
proprietary rewrite of MPX, but the rewrite turned out to be too expensive,
so the NPL can be said to be more UNIX oriented than most.