From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Sam To: <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] design clairvoyance & the 9 way In-Reply-To: <3EB9A8EB.3070100@ameritech.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 12:04:43 -0400 Topicbox-Message-UUID: a4aca3d2-eacb-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 > > > Isn't that kind of like what Bill Gates said... something > about "640 kilobytes should be enough"... I suppose if we go to something completely revolutionary like, for example, 3D hologram interfaces (a la star wars: `help me obi wan kenobi, you're my only hope'), we could see processing power become a bottleneck again ... or not. Ingenuity hasn't been terribly successful at keeping up with Moore's law. The processor race in the 90s was fueled largely by systems overloaded with cruft. Ousterhout accurately asked, "why aren't operating systems getting faster as fast as hardware (usenix, '90)." Plan9 is a good answer to this question, but still seems rather heavy on the inside. It's not a one-man maintainable kernel, though SuperRuss certainly does an admirable job. > SMP is still valuable for a ton of research, the DNA modeling > project comes to mind. I was talking to fellow Interlochen Sure, there will always be a place for large computing systems. The question of whether it's necessary on the desktop still remains. Perhaps it has a place in a centralized file server, but perhaps not. We're facing a new paradigm where all the world is an x86, networks are fast *and* reliable, and it's all at a rather reasonable cost. As pragmatists, we're constantly trying to figure out how it can be done simpler. Perhaps the kernel *should* be architecture dependent, if you cover 95% of the world. Perhaps the complexity of an SMP kernel just isn't worth it unless you *are* examining DNA and even then, why a timesharing OS? Questioning design decisions and rewriting with discretion is all a part of system evolution. I think it's wonderful that our pioneers are still alive for us to bother. ;) There's something to be learned from 9 about system design and evolutionary compatibility in the face of long-term efficacy. Cheers, Sam