[Info-vax] VSI: "Official 8.4-1H1 Launch"

[johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk]

On Saturday, 6 June 2015 18:11:27 UTC+1, John Reagan  wrote:
> On Saturday, June 6, 2015 at 1:00:42 PM UTC-4, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
> > Simon Clubley skrev den 2015-06-06 13:18:
> > > On 2015-06-05, johnwallace4 <johnwallace4> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Things we now know that we didn't know this time yesterday:
> > >> * VMS will indeed (as JES assumed) be the guest under KVM. Makes sense
> > >> to me.
> > >
> > > I wonder what kind of jitter/latency this will cause for real time
> > > applications ?
> > >
> > > Simon.
> > >
> > 
> > I had the same thought, but as I understood Clairs post, they would
> > also provide a native (non-VM) VMS port for x86 (?).
> > 
> 
> Yes.  Both.
> 
> > Now, it also depends on the definition of "real time". I do not
> > expect to see x86 VMS systems of any sort having dedicated
> > communication or DAC/ADC cards or similar. Most of that kind
> > of things has moved "down" to PLCs or other embedded systems.
> 
> You don't have such on Itanium or Alpha today, do you?
> 
> NonStop on x86 doesn't use/need any special hardware.

[Lots of words, no TLDR, sorry]

I assume (!) Jan-Erik isn't familiar with National Instruments
product range (hardware and software). Lots of people round here
probably aren't, which is fair enough. It'd be nice if there were
one or two users around here...

In one paragraph: any lab or instrumentation or automation-style
IO you fancy (within reason), typically controlled by computers on
CompactPCI cards (think PCI electricals in VME-style cards, or look
it up). CPU is x86,m OS is (mostly) Windows. Applications are
programmed by a nice shiny  graphical tool which, unlike many,
actually seems to do a decent job of what it's supposed to do. And
if you want to link to external code, you can.

It sells like hot cakes in its sector and seems perfectly adequate
for most automated test equipment and beyond, e.g. it allegedly
participates in controlling the Large Hadron Collider and such. 
http://sine.ni.com/cs/app/doc/p/id/cs-10795

Time-critical stuff incompatible with Windows (which, frankly, is 
almost anything below a significant fraction of a second) can be
integrated via delegating it to an anonymous NI RTOS in a separate
NI box. Or by using NI's RT Linux:
http://www.ni.com/white-paper/14627/en/
Or maybe just do it in hardware with an FPGA programmed using NI's
usual tools.

If the future of Windows was as clear today as it had been for the
last couple of decades, there'd be no real need for the NI world
to even consider change here. Is the future clear?

If I were talking to decisionmakers re LabView futures, I'd be
asking where they see Windows in three or five years time. Because
it looks like there is a significant chance that Windows 10 and
such cloudy stuff will *not* be a viable platform for NI's current
strategy. But I don't get out much so I could be way off beam.

However, there are already people asking similar questions re
LabView and Windows 10. Some are seeing Raspberry Pi (or similar)
as part of the answer. It might well be.

Intel would probably prefer NI to pick something more like Intel's
(absurd) NUC boxes, which afaict don't even have any IO capability
beyond usual laptop-style stuff (e.g. no PCI slots).

DEC briefly tried to play in a similar kind of control and automation
space with DECrti on VMS and OSF, which was an interesting product.
I think it was Palmerised to Kinetic Systems before vanishing without
trace (hey, it makes a change from the usual suspects).

There seem to be several companies called Kinetic Systems; I suspect
the one in question is kscorp.com but ICBW. There are somewhat
similar but maybe less well known control+instrumentation companies
around the world.

Hytec Electronics was/is one of them, a mile or so up the A33 from
DEC Park in Reading UK (long gone). They're vaguely relevant here
because they were doing vaguely this kind of thing on VMS/Alpha boxes
with DIY drivers and either PCI cards in Alpha systems or VME cards
accessed with PCI<->VME adapters (or CAMAC boxes, or ...). And on
lots of other hardware and software too.

LabwView sells like hot cakes to the kind of people who were DEC's
original engineering customers: engineers with their own budgets,
outside the dead hand of the IT department. People whose purchasing
decisions are driven by consistent functionality and quality (of
product and support), the price is secondary, and the trendiness is
irrelevant, so long as it does the job.


NB I've only ever used this NI stuff in a training context. But I've
known plenty of people who swear by it, and very very few people who
swear at it. Which, where computers are involved, is unusual.

Have a lot of fun.