Fastest?

[gabor]

Hi!

I had to look for my pills when I read this (not a precise quotation):

"...in Microsoft's OS team... not know how to program in assembly..."

Well, no comment. I mean, I can understand that an OS these days is much more bigger, more complex than an OS in the '80s, like DOS. But I don't think I'd demand too much if I say, the programers, coders of a leading software company with huge influence should have at least a faint idea about ASM and machine codes. I am really fed up with such coders who think there were small dwarfs or sprites inside the computer who will then know what to do if the coders write a printf or writeln or whatever. I get almost angry about that this philosofy of wasting and oversizing resources forces us, end users to by the newer-faster-larger hardware and generate incredibly huge quanity of hitech trash (for example, how may a 386 motherboard be utilised?). Say, a professor or a teacher who would use a word processor and an email program has to by a computer capable of far more things because of the needs of the OS. This is ridiculous, isn't it?

Now, that Intel cannot increase the CPU freq they start to sell dual processor systems and the whole game starts over.

I have almost lost every hope in the computing scene when I've heard that Apple will use Intel processors. Well, I am a RISC architecture fan (DEC's Alpha processor was the king), so I felt really-really down and sad about this news... Not to mention that technology and innovation are always developing better in competition... Now, just like in Highlander just one can remain...


Greets, Gábor

Long live ASM, and open source and systems and down with software patterns. :)))

[Ratch]

     I don't mean to hijack this thread, but the original question appears to have been answered, and now we can reminisce a bit.  I used to work in the support dept of a large mainframe manufacturer, and I miss some of the OS features we took for granted.  For instance, the big iron mainframe OS had something called Checkpoint/Restart.  That meant that if a power outage or other problem occurred, such that the CPU could not continue, one could start up the machine after the prob had been fixed, and the job would take off from where it stopped.  It did this by taking a snapshot of its registers and other program environment essentials every so often, or when the programmer told the OS  to do so.  The OS also logged every event that occurred.  The system analyist could reconstruct what operations each user or batch job did at any time.  That does not mean the analyst could reconstruct the data, but he could at least find out what files the user read or wrote, the programs run, the times for these events, and many other things.  And then correlate them with any problems the OS logged during that time.  Naturally all threads were sent to a switch list, where any of up to four CPUs could grab a thread and execute it.  And memory was controlled by a Dynamic Allocator, which made all or most of the memory resources available to the OS or user.  Security was guaranteed by a storage limits register which, hardwarewise, would not let one program encroach on another's space.  All this and much more was built in and integrated into the OS, so no add-me-ons, or other after market gizmos were required. 

     All this was in place and running long before the PC was just a gleam in BILLionaire's eye.  I know that al least some of the above mentioned things are available now, but it sure took long enough to implement, didn't it?  Ah, the good ole days, when things got done in a reasonable time.  Ratch