Aucbvax.2049
fa.works
utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!COMSAT.SoftArts@MIT-Multics
Thu Jul 2 19:11:35 1981
Re: Addressing and File Accessing
Poor Multics. People seem to attribute all the limitations of
its imitators to the original. One of the major advances in
Multics was its large address space and the uniform treatment
of the address space. Files are not an intrinsic part of
Multics -- only a convention for access memory through I/O
routines. There isn't even I/O -- just a set of conventions
for writing for writing an I/O interface module.
Yes, the system/38 does work out a lot of the ideas and I still
feel it is IBM's most advanced system and have suggested people
look at it as a model. But from what I hear it has not solved
its performance problems, though the model of using gobs of
computational power to provide a powerful interface is the
correct one.
The other difference is that Multics provides the full power of
its process to its users. The System/38 is packaged like a
real computer but seems to be much closer to an assembly
language/PLS interpreter running the user code. It was clever
to invent the term vertical microcode, it means that they don't
need to give you a listing of the operating system and are free
to change the internals as long as they preserve the user
interface.
Overall I think that the System/38 is a winner and one day IBM
will tell people that it is more than a System/34 upgrade. On
the other hand, I have not used it directly and RPG III (a VHLL
production language if you want to look at it that way) is the
only language currently available. It is also a little on the
expensive side, even compared to a Star.
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