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

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-06-06 17:11:25 +0000, John Reagan said:

> On Saturday, June 6, 2015 at 1:00:42 PM UTC-4, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
> 
>> 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?

Yes, there are specialized interfaces around for Alpha and Itanium 
configurations.

Such widgets are not as commonly needed as back in the Q-bus era, but 
there are folks that must inhale deeply of their big fat data pipes.

Though without add-in hardware, USB isochronous transfers and network 
connections and serial connections can only get you so far, and with 
only so much bandwidth and predicability...

> NonStop on x86 doesn't use/need any special hardware.

I wouldn't usually place NonStop in the same application range as the 
usual real-time control tasks that VMS and MicroVMS were once more 
widely used for.   NSK is more akin to what VAXft provided, something 
which wasn't AFAIK used very often for real-time control and 
monitoring.  Sure, you could use NSK or VAXft, but factory-floor and 
PLC and not-gonzo real-time not-gonzo uptime is the sort of thing that 
Wind River Systems now provides.  Wind River VxWorks was the target for 
various folks that were migrating off of VMS, too.



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