[Info-vax] Baremetal emulators, was: Re: Alpha emulator for OSX

[Simon Clubley]

On 2016-02-08, lists at openmailbox.org <lists at openmailbox.org> wrote:
>
> Very well said as usual. But is this an issue for OpenVMS users? Is OpenVMS
> used for real-time applications?
>

Oh, yes, at least for soft real-time ones. (VMS isn't really suitable for
hard real-time as it doesn't have the required guarantees. No doubt
someone will be along shortly to claim they have successfully done it
anyway for specific problem areas. :-))

As Johnny has pointed out, VMS has a level of soft real-time capability
which traditionally has not existed in the normal Unix world.

Moving those applications to an emulator could potentially _really_
mess with their timing deadlines depending on how the emulator is
implemented.

I do get the feeling however that a number of those applications, by way
of redesign/replacement, have already been moved off VMS on to more
dedicated environments, which probably isn't really surprising when you
consider the embedded/real-time options available these days.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world