Unix optimized for SPARC?

[Ron Holt]

In article <4722 at vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com> barnett at vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett) writes:
>In article <253 at iconsys.UUCP> ron at iconsys.UUCP (Ron Holt) writes:
>|Of course,
>|there are very machine specific sections of the Unix kernel, the VM code
>|being a good example, but other than that, how could Unix be optimized
>|for SPARC?
>
>I agree with your sentiment. Optimizing it for a RISC machine,
>along with the other ABI's, should increase the portability of the kernal.
>
>But that is an old topic. The new one is that OSF plans to
>remove all of the AT&T code eventually.

Pardon me for asking a question for which you already know the answer.
At least you could have answered my question before changing the subject.
I have not read every article that has ever been posted to this group.
I would still like an answer to the original question.  Why is there all
this fear that AT&T/Sun will steer the evolution of Unix towards a particular
chip considering Unix's characteristic of portability.  This fear seems
unfounded.  Email me if this has already been discussed.

>Does anyone have a guestimate on the amount of effort this would take?
>And how do you prove you weren't influenced by the AT&T code?

These would be a good questions for Richard Stallman since he is also trying
to produce a version of Unix free of AT&T code.  He states in the GNU
documentation: "I must avoid reading Unix source code."  The founding OSF
members certainly have read AT&T source code.
-- 
Ron Holt                     UUCP: {uunet,caeco}!iconsys!ron
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