IBM announces UNIX for VM

[Herb Chong [DCS]]

some more notes. 

1)  with the simultaneous announcement of the new Sierra machines with
the top end model rumored to be a 8 by 16MIPS processor, it will be
possible now to run Unix (IX/370) on a machine that can support up to
1000 simultaneous users.  the number of entries in the /etc/passwd file
will be possibly in the tens of thousands.  is the unix file system up
to handling such a task.  how about the /usr/utmp file?  is there a
fundamental limitation of the file system design that could restrict
extremely large applications?

2) with official announced support of such a system by IBM, how much
are they going to influence the directions for development of Unix?
will it really take a nose-dive in terms of design and execution?
Unix itself has grown much from the early days and is no longer the small
system that could be easily understood by one person.  at the risk of many
flames, i see it as somewhere along the path that OS/360 has evolved.
as people ask for more functionality, Unix is growing too.  will it, ten
years from now, be some oversized system that takes 30 or 40 people busy
just fixing bugs in the system?  Unix is slowly headed that way now.
whether it gets there remains to be seen.

3) how is AT&T taking this?  i'm sure they're going to welcome the
increased revenue.  can IBM break AT&T's monopoly on the Unix system
vis a vis licensing?  do they want to?

4) how about amdahl?  their UTS system has been around for a while but
hasn't taken off in popularity as it could easily have.  with the system 5
port just announced, they are once again in direct competition with IBM
for operating systems for /370 and 370-XA machines.

Herb Chong, BASc
Computer Consultant 

I'm user-friendly -- I don't byte, I nybble....

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