[Info-vax] September 6, 2016 - new Roadmap and State of the Port updates now on VSI website

[clairgrant71 at gmail.com]

On Wednesday, September 7, 2016 at 2:51:30 PM UTC-4, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2016-09-07, Paul Sture <nospam at sture.ch> wrote:
> > On 2016-09-07, clairgrant71 at gmail.com <clairgrant71 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> As promised......first week in September updates.
> >
> > URLs for those:
> >
> ><https://vmssoftware.com/pdfs/VSI_Roadmap_20160906.pdf>
> >
> ><https://vmssoftware.com/pdfs/State_of_Port_20160906.pdf>
> >
> 
> Thank you Clair (and Paul for the links).
> 
> Some very interesting reading indeed.
> 

A few answers...


> From the Roadmap:
> 
> I see we are about 18 months to 2 years away from an Early Adopters
> x86-64 release although the new file system looks like it's going to
> show up earlier in IA64 (but with the current 32 bit size limitations).
> 

The new file system is really two pieces of work: 1) improving performance and
2) removing the 2TB volume limit. The latter is dependent on another
project which we call 64bLBN which increases the size of the logical block number.
This work is in progress now but must be in a major, i.e x.0, release. But the
performance aspect will be mostly completed earlier so we see no reason not to
get it out when it is ready.

> I wonder what "Enhanced Application Isolation and Management" means ?
> Is it SELinux MAC type security or more a chroot/jail type security ?
>

MAC is not what I have in mind. I wanted to get away from the term "containers",
too much baggage, too many preconceived notions, but expanding and
adding to some existing VMS features should get us a more managed application
environment. Right, very vague, but that's the starting point for now.
 
> I like the idea of a dynamic binary translator for Alpha _and_ IA64.
> (Unrelated, but I recently looked around for an IA64 full system
> emulator which would run IA64 VMS but without success. It looks
> like IA64 wasn't popular enough to justify a full system emulator
> being written for it.)
>

In the two previous ports we did a static translator. I think we should do more
this time. 

 
> I also like the additional emphasis on security in years to come.
> 

That was intentional. The list of projects will get bigger.

> BTW, thank you for adding the additional scripting language to the
> research areas.
> 
> The fact you are investigating MariaDB _and_ PostgreSQL is nice; but
> seeing Erlang on the list was a _major_ surprise. I wonder what is
> driving that ?
> 
> From the State of the Port:
> 
> I see you are planning to support C using the GEM frontend but you
> are switching to clang for C++. I assume that's to track the ongoing
> language enhancements to C++ without you having to continue to expand
> resources performing your own implementation of those enhancements.
> 

That is part of the reason. The other is that the Itanium C++ comes from Intel.
We don't need to be doing that anymore.

> I see Ada still has a question mark against it. It looks like that's
> still causing some discussions internally. :-)
> 
> With the two processor mode situation, are you far enough along with
> the port to get a feeling for the overheads of emulating executive mode
> when it comes to switching page tables on the user mode -> executive
> mode -> kernel mode -> executive mode -> user mode path while using RMS ?
> 
> I'm wondering just how painful TLB invalidation has proven to be in
> real life when you are switching page tables. I know that was an early
> concern of mine but others pointed out that x86-64 had features (the
> PCID support) which I was unaware of and which could reduce the pain
> dramatically.
> 

Too early for any of that. This was a pain to do on Itanium and we know the
details will be different on x86. We'll save our energy for the real thing.

> Once again Clair, thank you for producing these documents and allowing
> us to see how work on x86-64 VMS is progressing.
> 
> Simon.
> 
> -- 
> Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
> Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world