Re: Ada and JVM? Why not AdaVM?

[Tucker Taft <stt@averstar.com>]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> In article <3A79FE73.3D7F12A0@home.com>,
>   "Larry J. Elmore" <ljelmore@home.com> wrote:
> > Nick Roberts wrote:
> 
> > > I believe the original 'Ada chip' (as such) was the Intel
> > > 432, many moons
> > > ago (a 16-bit single backplane multiprocessor
> > > architecture). Sadly, it was
> > > cancelled due to lack of intere$t*.
> > >
> > > (Anyway, you don't need an Ada-specific CPU, you only need
> > > an Ada-specific OS ;-)
> 
> The i432 was a very odd design, which was certainly not done
> with Ada in mind (not clear *what* was in mind, this chip was
> doomed to fail, since it was impossible to implement
> efficiently). ...
> Nothing could have rescued it in my opinion. The design had the
> appearence of being done by high level language folks with no
> view of what could be implemented efficiently. There was really
> nothing specifically Ada about the design.

I thought the 432 was an attempt to implement many of the
ideas of the capability-based Hydra operating system in hardware.

Capability-based operating systems were pretty hot for a while,
but someone forgot that 90% of the usefulness of an operating system 
(as opposed to a real-time executive) is at the shell/tool level, and
Hydra never got there.  Mach, which was a follow-on to the
Hydra work, included a Unix emulator on top of it, and that is
probably what has kept it alive so long, and now appearing in a local
MacOS-X near you... 

-- 
-Tucker Taft   stt@avercom.net   http://www.averstar.com/~stt/
Chief Technology Officer, AverCom, Inc. (A Titan Company) Burlington, MA  USA
(AverCom was formed 1/1/01 from the Commercial Division of AverStar)
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