Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Criteria for comparing RISC processors
Message-ID: <1645@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 18 May 89 16:29:22 GMT
References: <2368@ogccse.ogc.edu> <1464@cfa.cfa.harvard.EDU> <141@dg.dg.com> <156@dg.dg.com> <658@pitstop.West.Sun.COM> <165@dg.dg.com> <105001@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <174@dg.dg.com>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 30

>   Ya got me there!  DG does not intend to drop the MV series at all.  But
>I notice a big difference running in a Sun environment (Sun/3 and Sun/4s
>mixed).  When I am operating in the DG world, I say "cc foobar" and I can
>run the application from any terminal at any location.  In the Sun 3/4 world,
>I say "cc foobar" and I move to another location, and have to say "cc foobar"
>again (while renaming the binaries differently in my working directory, of
>course).

I.e., either:

	1) You're talking only about MVs or only about 88K machines;

	2) The MVs have 88K emulators, or the 88K machines have MV
	   emulators, or both;

	3) "cc" produces object and executable code for both machines,
	   so that executable images can be run by either machine.

right?  (I assume it's not 1), since if that's the case the comparison
with the Sun environment would be irrelevant - if you had an all-Sun-3
or all-Sun-4 or all-Sun386i environment, you could run the application
from any terminal at any location, assuming it didn't require some
device(s) available only on some machines, or something like that.)

>I see that Sparc is now attempting to follow in the footsteps of
>the 88K BCS! 

Huh?  At the time the AT&T/Sun deal was announced, the prospect of a
SPARC ABI was also announced; the ABI has been under development for
quite a while.  It was hardly inspired by the 88K BCS....