From: ameline@vnet.ibm.com (Ian Ameline)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 92 18:57:31 EDT
Subject: Re: NT vs OS/2 features (was Re: Misinformation about os2-dos HW access)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Organization: C-Set/2 Development, IBM Canada Lab.
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not those of IBM

In article <1992Sep01.010548.11230@microsoft.com>,
philipla@microsoft.com (Phil Lafornara) writes:
>
>In article <1992Aug31.071152.10931@nuscc.nus.sg> eletanjm@nuscc.nus.sg (TAN JIN MENG) writes:
>>brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:
>>
>>: 	Full symmetric multiprocessing support.
>>I believe IBM has a Parallan server (multiprocessor) which runs OS/2. I
>>don't know any other details though.
>
>     Multiprocessing != Symmetric multiprocessing.  Last I heard, IBM
>had a version of OS/2 that would run network stuff on one processor,
>and everything else on another.  That's not symmetric.
>     If there has been an advance that I haven't heard about, I'm sure
>someone will correct me.  :-)
   Symetric MP is not as hard as some make it out to be. Given that only
about 15% or less of the time is spent in the OS/2 kernel when doing
typical things, One could simply serialize the whole kernel (like
a SVR4.3 variant did for some MP machine), and get most of the benefits.
Fully serializing the kernel like NT is advertising would only get you
another 7.5%.
>>: 	SDK has C++
>>Borland's C/C++ is in beta now. I believe C++ is next on IBM's compiler
>>development list. Zortech has some (I belive) primitive OS/2 support
>>already. Don't forget GCC of course which (apparently - since I don't
>>have the toolkit |-(.) works with the IBM supplied toolkit.
>
>     C++ is a non-trivial language to support - if IBM is just
   Quite true. But we've already done it for one system, and we
have alot of experience writing portable and retargetable compilers.
You get your machine independant front end, and language independant
optimizing code generator and a common intermediate language, and it
becomes pretty easy to write compilers for multiple architectures and
languages. In my area of the Toronto Lab, we've done C for S/370,
S/6000, the old RT, AS/400 and OS/2, C++, Pascal, and Fortran for S/6000,
COBOL, RPG for AS/400. Along with C++ announcement in Sept, there will
be a PL/I announcement as well (if you thought C++ was non-trivial!)
All 3 languages will use the same intermediate language and optimizing
code generator for OS/2.
>starting now, don't expect to see anything from them for a while.
>GCC does do C++, however.  Probably doesn't optimize, though.
>
   We've been at it for quite some time now. Expect an announcement
of final availability dates, prices and betas sometime in Sept.
GCC does optimize BTW. And so will ours. *Lots* (and class libraries
coming out your ears!)
>     It's been pretty reliable for me so far.  As you say, though,
>believe it when you see it.  Always good advice.
   Absolutely!

>     Strangely enough, FAT is faster than HPFS under Windows NT at
>the moment.
   And on OS/2 too -- this is not to say that HPFS slowed down, but that
FAT got *alot* faster. In any event, the performance difference is
very small.

Regards,
Ian.
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy