[Info-vax] VMS port to x86

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

Marc Van Dyck wrote 2012-05-12 00:19:
> JF Mezei wrote :
>> Was thinking about the Oracle allegations against HP.
>>
>> HP did have plans to port HP-UX to x86 and started the work.
>> And I have been told that porting of VMS to x86 had also been started.
>>
>> Neither of which would have been official projects since they couldn't
>> appear in any books since HP wanted very much to hide the fact that
>> IA64'S EOL was aready planned.
>>
>>
>> At some point, HP decided to not port to x86.
>>
>> Then, VMS experienced engineering team is fired and replaced by newbie
>> programmers given 2 weeks of training.
>>
>> Looks to me that once HP decided to end of line its proprietary OS at
>> same time as IA64, there was no point in keeping the experienced
>> engineering teams since they wouldn't be needed for the port.
>>
>> I fear it may be too late to save VMS.
>
> Rather than porting the entire operating system, would it not be
> much more efficient to just port HPVM to X86, and then let OVMS
> and HPUX run on top of that ? Once the Odyssey project will give
> its first results, will we have a robust enough environment to
> propose it in combination with HPVM ported to X86 to replace the
> Itanium hardware ?
>

HPVM is, as far as I know, not an emulator. If HPVM would run
on X86, the guest OS'es would also need to be X86 versions.