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From: gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: In defense of the VAX
Message-ID: <76700073@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 22 Feb 89 08:01:00 GMT
References: <11037@tekecs.TEK.COM>
Lines: 29
Nf-ID: #R:tekecs.TEK.COM:11037:p.cs.uiuc.edu:76700073:000:1193
Nf-From: p.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies    Feb 22 02:01:00 1989


Re:  Was the VAX designed to be as bad as possible????

1.  I seem to remember from my OS class that the vax virtual memory
system was quite an innovation.  I don't know about VM in today's
machines -- do they do it any *BETTER*?

2.  The VAX taught us to build RISC's.  It was very successful at that.

3.  The VAX taught us to hate heavyweight procedure calls.

4.  The VAX taught 32000 designers how to architect their machine.

5.  The VAX was made to sell in 1978.  Ok, Flame ON!  Have you GOT ANY
FRIGGING IDEA HOW EXPENSIVE MEMORY WAS IN 1978????  PEOPLE NEEDED TO
USE IT IN 1978, OK???  CAN YOU PARSE THAT????  Flame off.  Other
companies in 1978 (Xerox), full of smart people, were architecting
machines under the same assumptions as the VAX, and came up with
worse/more restricted results (DLions).

5.  The VAX was AMAZING when it came out.  It created the "supermini"
class of machine, as the first such computer from a major manufacturer
(sorry, Gould / Perkin-Elmer).  How quickly we forget all this...



Don Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois
1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801      
ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu   UUCP: {uunet,harvard}!uiucdcs!gillies