[Info-vax] Dave Cutler, Prism, DEC, Microsoft, etc.

[Tim E. Sneddon]

Bob Koehler wrote:
> In article <4af8dc2d$0$277$14726298 at news.sunsite.dk>, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= <arne at vajhoej.dk> writes:
>> So they did inherit Macro and Bliss from PDP-11.
>>
> 
>    Macro-11 is not Macro-32, although there is some similarity because
>    there is some similarity in architecture,and the thinking of the
>    folks who wrote the assemblers.
> 
>    Bliss-11 and Bliss-32 are variants of Common BLISS, as is Bliss-36.

Not to be too pedantic, but...Common BLISS (or the DEC BLISSes) are
derived from BLISS-11.  However, there are significant differences.

BLISS-32, -36 and -16 are all Common BLISS compilers.  Depending on
the variant it may be a native compiler or a cross-compiler (there
is even a BLISS-36 variant that outputs BLISS-10).

BLISS-11 is the language described in 'The Design of an Optimizing
Compiler'.

>    Bliss-36 is more a direct decendant of the original BLISS for PDP-10
>    (aka BLISS-10).  There is a version of Bliss-32 that actually does
>    64 bit for Alpha, and something for IA64.

BLISS-36 is actually Common BLISS.  BLISS-10 does not bare much
resemblance to BLISS-36 code.  As you say, there are BLISS-32
compilers for both Alpha and IA-64.  There are also compilers
for MIPS, PRISM and IA-32.

> 
>    Bliss-11 exists only as a cross compiler that runs on PDP-10 or one
>    that runs on VAX.  There's source for a Bliss-11 compiler somewhere
>    in the DECUS archives, I think it's written in Macro-10.
> 

I don't believe there was ever a BLISS-11 that ran on the VAX.  I
would have thought it would have been quite difficult to port given
it was written in BLISS-10.  There was a BLISS-16 that ran on the
VAX and targeted the PDP-11.

Someone (the name escapes me at the moment) did port BLISS-11 to
BLISS-64.  That was a PDP-11 target compiler that ran on either
OpenVMS Alpha or I64.

>    So if VMS inheritted BLISS from anywhere, I'd say it's from PDP-10,
>    not PDP-11.
> 

BLISS came into VMS because of a decision made (according to Ron
Brender) in the Fall of 1976.

Tim.