Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hpfcdc!marc
From: marc@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Marc 'Sphere' Sabatella)
Newsgroups: comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: Re^2: Unix bigotry
Message-ID: <5900004@hpfcdc.HP.COM>
Date: 16 Feb 89 18:19:52 GMT
References: <4434@freja.diku.dk>
Organization: HP Ft. Collins, Co.
Lines: 20

/ hpfcdc:comp.os.misc / karl@ficc.uu.net (karl lehenbauer) /  8:54 am  Feb 15, 1989 /

>NOS as an alternative to Unix?  Ha.  Consider that NOS only runs on expensive
>mainframes.  Consider also that CDC's highest performance machines, the
>ETA series, are available with Unix System V.  Can't you get a native Unix
>for the Cray, now, too?

(I believe CDC and ETA are separate entities, although ETA did spin off from
 CDC.  CDC's own supercomputers are the 200's)

There was a discussion (wasn't it here?) a while ago concerning single
character I/O.  NOS doesn't support it, and that fact alone causes it to
run X% faster than Unix on the same machine.  I would also claim that the better
support for batch-mode processing in NOS also makes it faster than Unix, and
the numerous kludges necessary to get Unix to run on a machine with 60 bit
words is also bound to slow it down a little more, etc.

If you are going to shell out the major $$$ for a Cyber 200, ETA-20, or Cray 2,
you don't want to saddle it with an operating system that is not going to take
full advantage of the hardware.