Thanks for sharing, very interesting history to me. You guys were pros.. particularly amazing to me how far ahead the machine abstractions were on the various IBM machines (CP, S/38, VRM) compared to most of the industry. On Wed, Feb 19, 2020 at 11:44 PM Charles H. Sauer wrote: > > > On Feb 18, 2020, at 7:41 AM, Kevin Bowling > wrote: > > > > ... > > > > IBM abandoned the idea of any ukernel with AIX3 for RISC/6000.. Charlie > may be able to add commentary on that but it was almost certainly for > performance which was paramount in the workstation wars and RS6K had an > front runner opening. > > > > I initially missed Kevin's ping after my spam filter put several TUHS > messages in /var/mail/devnull. (I eventually skim subject lines of messages > that go there.) > > I could write more than I want to/should about how the VRM came to be and > not to be, but will try to add a little to what I've said before ( > https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2017/03/08/lets-start-at-the-very-beginning-801-romp-rtpc-aix-versions/). > I'm trusting 30+ year-old memories here and not looking at the various > papers and manuals that might inform. > > I joined Glenn's AFWS project July 5, 1982. There was no well defined > software plan yet. Glenn wanted to do something useful and significant, and > proposed that we do the VRM. We had several distinct user environments in > mind. I took the lead in writing a specification of the VMI (virtual > machine interface) while others started prototyping. We were way overly > ambitious with abstractions along the lines of the single level store of > (Glenn's) System 38, trying to take advantage of the 40 bit addressing of > the Rosetta virtual memory chip, yet still heavily influenced by CP/CMS. > After a few months, Al Chang, primary person behind CP.R, came to Austin > for a design review of what we'd done. He told Glenn he'd grade our work > "C+". That might have been generous. > > We scaled back our ambitions dramatically, started working with ISC. About > the time (1983) of the transition from "ad tech" to "product" organization, > it became clear that our virtual memory manager needed to be scrapped and > we lifted what Al had done for CP.R and put it in the VRM. > > In hindsight, the VRM turned out better than it might have. Besides AIX > there was a version of Pick for VRM that sold about 4000 copies according > to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RT_PC. Though the VMI cost us some > in performance, we were surprisingly successful in minimizing the > penalties. But with AIX 3 and RS/6000 we wanted to take dramatic steps > forward, and it made no sense to preserve the VMI. > > Anecdotal comments on other TUHS/COFF discussions: > > If I recall correctly, pcc, eventually including the HCR optimizing phase, > was bundled with base AIX. Initially, the C compiler based on the PL.8 > compiler would only run on CMS, so it was not generally available outside > of IBM, but app vendors, especially CAD vendors, were enabled and > encouraged to come to Austin to use it to get the best performance. The > native C compiler based on PL.8 compiler concepts ended up being a complete > rewrite, outside of Yorktown, and sold as a separate product. > > Producing software products, getting them released, priced, etc. was very > confusing to me most of the time I was at IBM. Part of it was the history > that Clem has cited. Part of it was confusion about the antitrust suits > against IBM. Part of it was confusion about whether and what software was > patentable. Academics and others wanted access to the modeling & simulation > software, RESQ, my team developed at Yorktown. Eventually, the concept of > "Research Distributed Program" was agreed upon and RESQ was the first > instance: https://technologists.com/sauer/RA144.pdf. However, we were > forced to price RESQ much higher than I thought reasonable. I had already > transferred to Austin by the time the release was official -- I don't know > how many copies were sold. But source code was necessary to take full > advantage of RESQ so the PL/I source was included on the tapes. > > When OSF was announced, with the intention of making AIX source available > to the other OSF companies, I was stunned because it was so > uncharacteristic of the IBM I thought I knew. It would be interesting to > know how that would have worked out if OSF had stuck with AIX and IBM had > delivered the source on the schedule everyone hoped for, but that's on a > different timeline than this one. > > > -- > voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer@technologists.com > fax: +1.512.346.5240 web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ > Facebook/Google/Skype/Twitter > : > CharlesHSauer > >