Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!hellgate.utah.edu!uplherc!wicat!sarek!gsarff
From: gsarff@sarek.UUCP (Gary Sarff)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: IBM RISC
Message-ID: <00405@sarek.UUCP>
Date: 24 Feb 90 15:07:10 GMT
References: <9376@portia.Stanford.EDU> <E58.+d@cs.psu.edu>
Organization: Programmers in Exile
Lines: 21

In article <E58.+d@cs.psu.edu> schwartz@barad-dur.endor.cs.psu.edu (Scott E. Schwartz) writes:
>In article <9376@portia.Stanford.EDU> Dwight Joe writes:
>>So, does Sun launch that new architecture, say ARX, to compete
>>against the IBM 6000?  ....
>>If the answer is "no" (we don't incorporate upward compatibility),
>>then Sun LOSES.  The new Sun competitor against the IBM 6000
>>won't have ANY software adantage, which would be crucial in
>>the highly competitive marketplace.  
>
>I don't understand your claim here.  In this day and age porting an
>application (other than a compiler of some sort) to a new architecture
>(at least in the Unix world) usually involves typing "cc *.c".  The
                              [...]

There seem to be two different camps here.  I have seen numerous postings in
this group saying "architecture/machine xxx (sparc,mips,...) will do better,
look at all the applications/software base we have for the xxx architecture."
The poster above, says porting is nothing more than recompiling.  We can't
have it both ways.

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