[Info-vax] Moving away from OpenVMS

[Doug Phillips]

On May 23, 8:22 am, koeh... at eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob
Koehler) wrote:
> In article <jpgftk$te... at dont-email.me>, David Froble <da... 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.

I imagine you've read it, Bob, but for those who haven't, the OpenVMS
Technical Journal-v6 -Porting OpenVMS to HP Integrity Servers- is
worth reading (and rereading if it's been a while.)