virtual memory 4507

Brian Inglis

You don't suppose that could possibly have been because advances in the state of the art often appear earlier in academic papers than in commercial applications, do you? There is, after all, a rather considerable time-lag (often infinite, in fact) between such an advance and its incorporation into an existing, complex OS.

Of course, using the term 'bias' also carries connotations which really ought to be substantiated: it's hardly 'bias' to 'support' ('validate' might be a more appropriate term) something which actually *is* an improvement.

Well, *I* certainly asked for clarification at least once - perhaps I missed a similar request on your part. In any event, presuming to comment on the content of material which one has neither read nor had paraphrased still strikes me as more argumentative than objective, but then again objectivity seems to be in fairly general decline these days.

Other architectures that were not designed to cover a range of application down into the minicomputer space. And since VMS included mechanisms to support multi-page paging operations, it managed quite well in larger applications as well.

A sufficiently large value of 'fine' to have propelled DEC to a firm second place in the world of computing, with realistic potential to have competed for the top spot in a finite amount of time. The fact that a decade or so *after* its introduction the VAX page size may have become a bit constraining does not reflect poorly on its choice, only on DEC's failure to have created a suitable successor in a timely manner - and the fact that VAXen were still selling 22 years after their introduction indicates that for at least some significant uses a 512 B page size was *still* 'fine' then.

None of which remotely addresses the point to which you seem to think you were responding above: it's fine to question the timing and implementation of that decision, even to question whether it should have been made at all - but it's not fine to cast illegitimate aspersions at VAX because one is upset about said decision.

- bill