[Info-vax] VMS Software Partners with Stark Gaming to Create Revolutionary Online Gaming and eSport Server Infrastructure

[RobertsonEricW]

On Thursday, August 6, 2015 at 6:31:41 AM UTC-4, clairg... at gmail.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, August 5, 2015 at 10:11:42 PM UTC-4, IanD wrote:
>   
> > 
> > It would also be interesting to know if HP actually did any preliminary work in the past on moving >OpenVMS to x86 or whether VSI are indeed working from scratch...
> >
> 
> Not too long after we ported VMS to Itanium I was asked about porting VMS to x86. I gave my estimates of people and time and a general description of what needed to be done. That was the end of the discussion; I never heard another word. A number of us have thought about it for years. But, to my knowledge, no one has ever approached doing it either officially or as a midnight project. Technically, I guess you would say we are starting from scratch but we could have mapped out what to do a decade ago with the only real difference now being a much better compiler strategy. Also, people doing the work now have significant, valuable non-VMS experience with other operating systems and architectures which we did not have 10 years ago.

Clair,

As was briefly alluded to upthread, OpenVMS on X64 is going to significantly increase the use of the existing body of Run-Time Library analysis (for statically revealing possible points of attack) and malware generation toolkits that are already in use for other platforms running on Intel X64. Currently (and historically) most such tools do not target OpenVMS Platforms. So, comparatively speaking, OpenVMS has not had the same level of scrutiny and exposure that such tools have allowed for other OS's. What strategic approach is VSI planning to take in order to mitigate the risk posed by the extra level of scrutiny and exposure of running OpenVMS on the ubiquitous x64 platform which the equally ubiquitous availability of these toolkits enables?

Thanks in advance for any information you can provide along these lines.

Eric