On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 9:06 PM, Steve Thompson <[email protected]> wrote:
> RIP Gene. > > Never met him, worked with several who had after he had left AMDAHL. I > always thought highly of him as did they. > > I had hoped he would come up with another system to compete with IBM. They > sure need it. > Do you mean a "z" clone? Because, at least on the low and mid end markets, Intel is cleaning IBM's clock. IBM "z" is strictly for the upper class, aristocratic markets. The "unwashed peasant" companies who are not multi-billion dollar clients can just go somewhere else seems to be the users for the "z". Which is a pity. I simply love the zArchitecture ISA. I need to look at the Intel ISA again. Back in the Pentium days, it was so complicated that I thought it was amazing that anybody could understand it. I guess that's why Linux is written mainly in C. Let the compiler writers shoulder the weight of understanding the ISA and optimizing the execution code. Or course, IBM is hinting at that with their latest xlc compiler on z/OS which can embed assembler in "regular" C as well as Metal C. > > Regards, > Steve Thompson > > -- Schrodinger's backup: The condition of any backup is unknown until a restore is attempted. Yoda of Borg, we are. Futile, resistance is, yes. Assimilated, you will be. He's about as useful as a wax frying pan. 10 to the 12th power microphones = 1 Megaphone Maranatha! <>< John McKown ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
