[Info-vax] Moving away from OpenVMS

[Bob Koehler]

In article <jpgftk$te5$1 at dont-email.me>, David Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> writes:
> I've asked myself the question, what would it really take?
> 
> "I'd guess that would probably involve thirty senior engineers dedicated to design, 
> porting the kernel and related pieces, porting the compilers, plus all of the other 
> engineers with specific responsibilities for various components dealing with their own 
> pieces."

   What did it take to port from Alpha to IA64?  Parts should be easier
   since Alpha had a few features to make VMS work, like PALcode, and
   IA64 didn't.  A Macro-32 compiler might be harder since IA32 is CISC,
   so you don't have the one-to-many relationship between VAX
   instructions and IA32 instructions that you have with VAX to RISC or
   EPIC.

   But that latter is a matter of generating efficient code, just
   getting code to work should not be such a big deal.  A 32 bit add
   instruction on VAX has different side affects than the same
   instruction on IA32, but you can still add additional instructions
   to get the side effects when needed, just like RISC.