> On 17 Feb 2018, at 5:20:13 AM, simh-requ...@trailing-edge.com wrote:
> 
> Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2018 14:20:00 +0100
> From: Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se <mailto:b...@softjar.se>>
> To: simh@trailing-edge.com <mailto:simh@trailing-edge.com>
> Subject: Re: [Simh] pdp11 i/o addressing
> Message-ID: <4b366ace-3b40-7137-ed99-f55beb7c6...@softjar.se 
> <mailto:4b366ace-3b40-7137-ed99-f55beb7c6...@softjar.se>>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
> 
> On 2018-02-16 22:35, Larry Baker wrote:
>> Sorry Clem and Bob,
>> 
>> I think you are mixing apples and oranges and adding confusion with your 
>> use of VM to describe two different things.
> 
> Yes. We have a conflation of two different things. A rather common 
> mixup, unfortunately. Even more, though, while your comments below are 
> accurate, overlays are commonly not done through the MMU at all, so that 
> is yet another aspect.

My first experience with overlays—the old fashioned kind—was on an IBM 360.  I 
have much experience on RSX.  I gave presentations at DECUS about the easy way 
to construct overlays.

> (That said, under RSX, there is the option of 
> having overlay mapping done through the MMU, which is faster, but 
> potentially waste a lot of memory space.)

RSX offered more than just memory-mapped overlays.  (Which, gained us much 
speed—not a waste of memory at all.)  RSX Fortran had VIRTUAL arrays.  For us, 
enough program address space for data was usually the limitation.  I would say 
that RSX's VIRTUAL arrays come closer to the true virtual memory concept than 
memory-mapped overlays.

I suppose it I am being pedantic, but what you describe is really just the 
difference between program or logical address space and physical address space. 
 The former defined by the architecture, the latter defined by the 
implementation.  Virtual memory is more than that.  See Denning's 
http://denninginstitute.com/pjd/PUBS/ENC/vm08.pdf, which mentions the 
Manchester Atlas invention of paged virtual memory.  Some of what you described 
is known as the working set, a concept which Denning first described.

> 
>   Johnny
> 

Tim left unnamed a machine that considered everything memory, even I/O.  I bet 
that was Multics.  I admire some of Multics' ambitions, but practicalities 
doomed the effort.  Kind of like micro kernels, ala Mach and OSF/1.  A good 
idea for designing a system, but not necessarily for implementing one.

Larry Baker
US Geological Survey
650-329-5608
ba...@usgs.gov

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