Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!aplcen!haven!wam!walrus From: walrus@wam.umd.edu (Udo K Schuermann) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: bah ha ha ha! Message-ID: <1990Feb15.234412.8396@wam.umd.edu> Date: 15 Feb 90 23:44:12 GMT References: <90042.132253GIAMPAL@AUVM.BITNET> <-1773786462@convex.convex.com> Sender: usenet@wam.umd.edu (USENET Posting) Reply-To: walrus@wam.umd.edu (Udo K Schuermann) Organization: University of Maryland at College Park Lines: 40 In article <-1773786462@convex.convex.com> swarren@convex.com (Steve Warren) writes: >In article <90042.132253GIAMPAL@AUVM.BITNET> GIAMPAL@AUVM.BITNET writes: >> >>In article , >>portuesi@tweezers.esd.sgi.com (Michael Portuesi) says: >>> >>>From the 2/6 San Francisco Chronicle, Business section, without >>>permission: >>>Apple Computer Inc.'s largest sale to the federal government could be >>>reversed in the wake of a General Accounting Office ruling that >>> ... (stuff deleted) >>>system did not adequately meet the Air Force's requirements for >>>capability called "multitasking" -- the ability for a PC to perform >> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ - does this mean the Amiga is about to >>get a massive boost in the federal government arena? Boy oh boy, if Mr. >>Copperman pushes the Amiga on this sale, phewie! That would be one heckuva >>push for the 'ole amy. >> I wonder what will happen.... >>--dominic > [SOME STUFF DELETED] >The contract is for Unix workstations. Honeywell was the bidder that >attempted to provide Macs on the contract, running Apple's A/UX. Apparently >(not clear from the article) the requirement for "secure multitasking" >is met by A/UX, but not by the Mac OS. I am not certain what is meant >by "secure multitasking", but it sounds like they mean multi-user with >appropriate passwords and permission levels. If that is the standard >then AmigaDOS wouldn't meet the requirement either. Secure multitasking, I'm sure, in this case refers to the ability to execute tasks without possible interference to other tasks' address space. This requires an MMU (memory management unit). If A/UX employs memory protection, then it meets this requirement. I know that AmigaDOS does not make use of an MMU, and is in fact engineered so that the addition of an MMU could drastically reduce system performance: message passing under AmigaDOS is done by passing a pointer, not by copying data through operating system controlled shared memory: it's a performance issue. Udo Schuermann "I've got the 'segmentation violation: core dumped' blues."