Porting VMS to x86

Maybe so, but after years of hearing how the x86 architecture was
unsuitable for running VMS

Wow - some people will believe anything, I guess.

Given that active investigation of porting VMS to x86 was actually under
way in the early '90s, suggesting that there's any insurmountable
obstacle (beyond major amounts of mostly-standard grunt work) involved
seems a bit unreasonable - especially now that x86 has become 64-bit.

Hey Bill. I'm not a VMS guru by any stretch, but IIRC, VMS is one of
the few operating systems that actually makes use of some of the more
arcane elements of IA64. In particular, I'm thinking of the R/W/E bits
(of which x86 only has an E bit). It seems to me that this sort of
thing would require some rather substantial modifications to get
around...can someone comment on:

1. Whether it is true that VMS uses R/W/E (all three) bits for PTEs?
2. If there is an easy way to get around this in software?

[snip]

You don't think that, e.g., rewriting assembler routines in HLLs makes
porting easier? ISTR one or more of the associated engineers making
precisely this point a while ago - and explicitly stating that they took
advantage of the Itanic port to make a possible subsequent port easier.

I think it's pretty obvious that by the 3rd port, things would be quite
easy...but the cost may outweigh the benefits for HP.

DK

.

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