On 1/27/2012 8:52 AM, Kenneth Lerman wrote: > <...> > > All of this stuff needs to be designed in; it can't be patched into the > existing system. > > It's important to remember that the architecture and design of EMC is > ancient in computer years. My guess is that it dates back to the early > days of the X Windows system. That system was designed with the notion > that every desk would have a computer with one megabyte of RAM, a one > million instruction processor, and a one megapixel display. > > Today we have a thousand times as much processor and memory. We can keep > the context associated with a million line gcode program in memory if we > find that convenient. > > Regards, > > Ken > Ken:
I agree that the EMC computing environment was smaller and less capable than we have now but even then the developers were using substantial Unix work stations by Sun and others for development. PCs got their nose under the tent as they were becoming more powerful and a lot cheaper, Unix had been ported (remember the AT&T Unix PC?), a real-time environment had become available, the parallel port was inviting, etc. More likely "this stuff" as you call it wasn't designed in because it wasn't part of the original project brief. The architecture, whatever one thinks of it, probably was dictated mostly by the larger environment into which EMC fit in the NIST research program. None of which says we shouldn't be thinking about where we want LinuxCNC to go. At some point if these wide ranging discussions begin to solidify into proposals, I think it will be necessary to decide if this represents a technology refreshment or a new branch of LinuxCNC (the next-generation next-generation controller?). Regards, Kent ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Try before you buy = See our experts in action! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-dev2 _______________________________________________ Emc-developers mailing list Emc-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-developers
