10 ms·
First new VAX in 30 years?
- zinekeller 5y agoOh, wow, it's indeed nice (even though it's more like TransMeta's x86 implementation than a silicon-level design!) Reminds me of the efforts to implement the Japanese SuperH(2) RISC instruction set. (To you: you might want to clarify in the title that this is the VAX architecture they're talking about (since "vax" unfortunately might be confused here with the now-used shorthand for vaccine).)
- opless 5y agoor more likely the brand of vacuum cleaners :)
- canadianfella 5y agoYou think more people associate “vax” with a relatively small vacuum cleaner company than vaccines?
- mprovost 5y agoI felt quite old recently when someone at work recommended a Vax carpet cleaner and I mentioned that my first email account was on a Vax... and they had no idea what I was talking about. Had never heard of the platform, or of DEC.
- DonaldFisk 5y agoFun fact: the vacuum cleaner company (https://www.vax.co.uk https://www.vax.co.uk) had "Nothing sucks like a VAX!" as its advertising slogan: http://foldoc.org/vax http://foldoc.org/vax
- dhosek 5y agoI have a vague recollection that “nothing sucks like a vax” was a parody and never the vacuum cleaner’s slogan. A cursory google search doesn’t pull up anything authoritative and it seems like most of the claims that the vacuum cleaner people used it are all worded nearly identically. The photocopied afi saw back in the 80s was too on the nose to be really believable, feeling an awful lot like the mouse balls memo.
- DonaldFisk 5y agoIn that case it may be an urban myth, with its origin in the (apparently real) Electrolux advert shown here: https://web.archive.org/web/20180707150205/http://adland.tv/content/nothing-sucks-ad-myth/#comments https://web.archive.org/web/20180707150205/http://adland.tv/...
- dhosek 5y agoThe ad I remember showed an actual vacuum cleaner. I'd seen the one you linked to in my cursory googling. I'd hoped it would have the same vacuum cleaner picture to make the identification that much easier.
- boondaburrah 5y agoI've been meaning to check out J2 (the FPGA SH-2 core) for a while now. Mostly haven't because there doesn't seem to be as much support/howtos for the chip as there is for say arm/mips/m68k/whathaveyou. Most Super-H knowledge I can find online centers around programming the Dreamcast's SH-4 with GCC.
- p_l 5y agoVAX was a heavily microcoded design, so there wasn't really "silicon level" implementation of VAX instructions themselves - the microcode decoded the instructions and set inputs to execution units, and unlike some modern microcoded designs, there was much less hardwired implementation AFAIK
- twoodfin 5y agoAt least some VAX models supported user-supplied microcode and thus a customizable ISA. This could be used, for example, to implement a Prolog abstract machine directly on the CPU[1]. [1] http://hps.ece.utexas.edu/pub/gee_micro19.pdf http://hps.ece.utexas.edu/pub/gee_micro19.pdf
- herio 5y agoReally cool, but just to nitpick a bit not entirely correct in some ways. Logical systems still sell their NuVAX machines, see https://logical-co.com/product/nuvax-4400-system/ https://logical-co.com/product/nuvax-4400-system/ They also do PDP/11 systems and hardware. I think they might be built using an emulator on PC hardware with some interfacing hardware, but still I would call it a "new" VAX for most purposes.
- bencollier49 5y agoI suppose that means the author of the blog post potentially has a market for his FPGA implementation.
- rob74 5y agoI think getting VAX software to run on an FPGA board is the lesser problem - getting it to be 100% compatible so it can serve as a "slot-in" replacement for an existing VAX is probably a lot more difficult.
- chx 5y agoGE Canada has VAXen running their atomic plants and they are under contract to keep 'em running for a long time, 2035 or 2045. (Might be called BWXT today.)
- throw0101a 5y ago* https://www.theregister.com/2013/06/19/nuke_plants_to_keep_pdp11_until_2050/ https://www.theregister.com/2013/06/19/nuke_plants_to_keep_p...
- mrweasel 5y agoI would love to have some one write an article about how they even manages to do that. Are they real VAX servers or have they've been virtualized/emulated somewhere down the line.
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- Torwald 5y agoAnybody remember these? https://www.ebay.com/itm/174146521380?_trkparms=aid%3D1110006%26algo%3DHOMESPLICE.SIM%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20200818143230%26meid%3D8e38c596c7ad4c59a175f23c15cb5e3f%26pid%3D101224%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D5%26sd%3D184201155483%26itm%3D174146521380%26pmt%3D1%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2047675%26algv%3DDefaultOrganic&_trksid=p2047675.c101224.m-1 https://www.ebay.com/itm/174146521380?_trkparms=aid%3D111000...
- mousepilot 5y agowell does it boot vms or not?
- mrlonglong 5y agoThat would be awesome if that is possible some day. I still run OpenVMS in simh. And the new owners of OpenVMS are busy beavering away on an OpenVMS port to the amd64 platform and most software should compile cleanly so I've read. Can't wait !!!
- pickle-wizard 5y agoVMS Software has released the x86_64 port of OpenVMS recently. However it is not currently available under the hobbyist program. They say that is coming soon.
- phendrenad2 5y agoSomeone should tell them their website still says "VMS Software, Inc. is porting OpenVMS to x86", present continuous case.
- ok123456 5y agoNeeds to add MMU.
- slumdev 5y agoWild. Apparently there are many different efforts to use FPGAs to simulate old hardware: "Using FPGAs to Simulate old Game Consoles": https://jakob.engbloms.se/archives/3026 https://jakob.engbloms.se/archives/3026 "AMSTRAD ON AN FPGA": https://hackaday.com/2017/01/06/amstrad-on-an-fpga/ https://hackaday.com/2017/01/06/amstrad-on-an-fpga/ "MISTER FPGA: THE FUTURE OF RETRO GAME EMULATION AND PRESERVATION?": https://www.racketboy.com/retro/mister-fpga-the-future-of-retro-game-emulation-and-preservation https://www.racketboy.com/retro/mister-fpga-the-future-of-re...
- tyingq 5y agoI find it interesting when someone makes foundational improvements when using an FPGA to mimic an old CPU. The NextZ80 is a good example. It's designed to run 4x the amount of instructions at the same clock rate as a real Z80. And you can clock it to 40MHz, so it's effectively a 160Mhz Z80...compare to a typical 4/8Mhz real Z80. https://opencores.org/projects/nextz80 https://opencores.org/projects/nextz80
- ComputerGuru 5y agoYes, but how many programs written for the real thing have hard coded values dependent on cycle times?
- tpoacher 5y agoDid anyone else misread the title as "First new wax in 30 years" and imagine a completely different article? xD
- hereforphone 5y agoOnly the young
- tyingq 5y agoThere were apparently 2 prior working VAX FPGA implementations, but both were lost to time[1]. I tried the Wayback machine for both, but it doesn't seem to have the right time period cached. [1] http://www.avanthar.com/healyzh/decemulation/pdp_fpga.html http://www.avanthar.com/healyzh/decemulation/pdp_fpga.html (scroll to bottom)
- lproven 5y agoRT Logic: https://web.archive.org/web/20061019161717/http://www.rtlogic.com/satcom_key_projects.php https://web.archive.org/web/20061019161717/http://www.rtlogi... Not much info -- no more than is here: https://comp.os.vms.narkive.com/UKFNZj9v/fpga-vax https://comp.os.vms.narkive.com/UKFNZj9v/fpga-vax Noboyuki Kondoh's PhD thesis on the university effort is here, but only the abstract is in English: http://labo.nshimizu.com/thesis/b2004/1adt2415.pdf http://labo.nshimizu.com/thesis/b2004/1adt2415.pdf
- phendrenad2 5y agoOh that's sad. I remember when one of those was announced, I was going to grab the code, but now it's gone? Is internet decay accelerating?
- baus 5y agoI took my original programming classes on the VAX. I'm somewhat nostalgic for it. In many ways it was ahead of its time
- cbm-vic-20 5y agoThe clustering technology was way ahead of its time. Stuff that everyone oozes about over Kubernetes was in VMS clusters back in the 1980s.
- lproven 5y agoAbsolutely, and it did it better than k8s. You could cluster different versions of VMS, or cluster Alpha VMS with Itanium VMS, or all 3 at once. Alphas and Itaniums can run VAX emulators for legacy compatibility, and the copy of VMS in the emulator can be clustered with the OS on the host machine it's running on. VMS clusters had uptimes in decades. Compaq bought DEC. HP bought Compaq. So HP inherited VMS. It's now been spun off as a new company: https://vmssoftware.com/ https://vmssoftware.com/ When VMS later gained a POSIX mode and TCP/IP it was renamed OpenVMS. VMS Software is now porting VMS to x86-64. You can port *nix apps to VMS and run them natively. The clustering is still there and still works. There's a small chance OpenVMS might enjoy a small renaissance, bringing mainframe-like uptime and resilience to commodity x86 hardware, without all that pointless faffing around with VMs and one OS running another different OS inside a VM, with all the duplication and waste that this entails.
- lproven 5y agoYep, me too. Like a lot of people, I really miss filenames with built-in version numbers. [1] Create a file called `WUMPUS.FOR` [2] Every time you saved it, the OS automatically incremented the version number: `WUMPUS.FOR;2` and `WUMPUS.FOR;3` and `WUMPUS.FOR;42`. [3] You could optionally `PURGE WUMPUS.FOR` and all the old versions would be removed, and then the OS would continue making new versions. With this, who needs a revision control system? For a single user, this is all you need -- you can go back to old versions, copy or rename them to branch, etc. Unix came along at the same time as this was happening and it never incorporated this functionality, which is why we need clumsy functionality bolted on top, such as Git. The actual versioning info isn't in the filesystem -- it's hidden inside concealed data files.
- mabbo 5y agoThis seems interesting, but I lack context. Can someone ELI5? Or maybe more like 'Explain Like I'm a CS Undergrad' (ELICSUG?).
- ableal 5y agoIn 1981 the VAX 11-780 was an object of lust for engineering undergrads, who'd be lured by faculty with promises of access to the "1 MIPS, 1 MB RAM beast" ... The author says he re-implemented the CPU (using Verilog) on an FPGA running at 50 MHz, well enough to run a test binary successfully.
- mabbo 5y agoThanks!
- rjsw 5y agoTry this [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX
- lproven 5y agoUm. Now I feel like I'm 106 instead of "just" 53. OK, so, basically all modern mass-market OSes of any significance derive in some way from 2 historical minicomputer families... from the same company. Minicomputers are what came after mainframes, before microcomputers. A microcomputer is a computer whose processor is a microchip: a single integrated circuit containing the whole processor. Before the first one was invented in 1974 (IIRC), processors were made from discrete logic: lots of little silicon chips. The main distinguishing feature of minicomputers from micros is that the early micros were single-user: one computer, one terminal, one user. No multitasking or anything. Minicomputers appeared in the 1960s and peaked in the 1970s, and cost just tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, while mainframes cost millions and were usually leased. So minicomputers could be afforded by a company department, not an entire corporation... meaning that they were shared, by dozens of people. So, unlike the early micros, minis had multiuser support, multitasking, basic security and so on. The most significant minicomputer vendor was a company called DEC: Digital Equipment Corporation. DEC made multiple incompatible lines of minis, many called PDP-something -- some with 9-bit logic, some with 12-bit, 18-bit, or 36-bit logic. One of its early big hits was the 12-bit PDP-8. It ran multiple incompatible OSes, but one was called OS-8. This OS is long gone but it was the origin of a command-line interface with commands such as DIR, TYPE, DEL, REN and so on. It also had a filesystem with 6-letter names (all in caps) with semi-standardised 3-letter extension, such as README.TXT. This OS and its shell later inspired Digital Research's CP/M OS, the first industry-standard OS for 8-bit micros. CP/M was going to be the OS for the IBM PC but IBM got a cheaper deal from Microsoft for what was essentially a clean-room re-implementation of CP/M, called MS-DOS. So DEC's PDP-8 and OS-8 directly inspired the entire PC-compatible industry, the whole x86 computer industry. Another DEC mini was the 18-bit PDP-7. Like almost all DEC minis, this too ran multiple OSes, both from DEC and others. A 3rd-party OS hacked together as a skunkworks project on a disused spare PDP-7 at AT&T's research labs was UNIX. More or less at the same time as the computer industry gradually standardised on the 8-bit byte, DEC also made 16-bit and 32-bit machines. Among the 16-bit machines, the most commercially successful was the PDP-11. This is the machine that UNIX's creators first ported it to, and in the process, they rewrote it in a new language called C. The PDP-11 was a huge success so DEC was under commercial pressure to make an improved successor model. It did this by extending the 16-bit PDP-11 instruction set to 32 bits. For this machine, the engineer behind the most successful PDP-11 OS, called RSX-11, led a small team that developed a new, pre-emptive multitasking, multiuser OS with virtual memory, called VMS. VMX is still around: it was ported to DEC's Alpha, the first 64-bit RISC chip, and later to the Intel Itanium. Now it has been spun out from HP and is being ported to x86-64. But the VMS project leader, Dave Cutler, and his team, were headhunted from DEC by Microsoft. At this time, IBM and Microsoft had very acrimoniously fallen out over the failed OS/2 project. IBM kept the x86-32 version OS/2 for the 386, which it completed and sold as OS/2 2 (and later 2.1, 3, 4 and 4.5. It is still on sale today under the name Blue Lion from Arca Noae.) At Microsoft, Cutler and his team got given the very incomplete OS/2 version 3, a planned CPU-independent portable version. Cutler _et al_ finished this, porting it to the new Intel RISC chip, the i860. This was codenamed the "N-Ten". The resultant OS was initially called OS/2 NT, later renamed – due to the success of Windows 3 – as Windows NT. Its design owes as much to DEC VMS as it does to OS/2. Today, Windows NT is the basis of Windows 10 and 11. So the PDP-7, PDP-8 and PDP-11 directly influenced the development of CP/M, MS-DOS, OS/2, & Windows 1 through to Windows ME. A different line of PDPs directly led to UNIX and C. Meanwhile, the PDP-11's 32-bit successor directly influenced the design of Windows NT. When micros grew up and got to be 32-bit computers themselves, and vendors needed multitasking OSes with multiuser security, they turned back to 1970s mini OSes. This project is a FOSS re-implementation of the VAX CPU on an FPGA. It is at least the 3rd such project but the earlier ones were not FOSS and have been lost.
- ChrisArchitect 5y agoThought this might be about getting "VAX-inated" with the vaccine..... ;)
- ChrisArchitect 5y agorelated / other thread from this netbsd list a few days ago New Vax Implementation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27742540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27742540
- lc9er 5y agoInteresting. I had an assembly course taught on a VAX system in 2001. At the time, I had the impression it was because the instructor had access to it and felt it was of historical significance. I wish I could remember more about the experience.
- bwanab 5y agoI’d say it was because the VAX (and the PDP-11 family that preceded it) has one of the cleanest instruction sets of any processor family that was ever extensively used. It was almost as easy as C to program in its assembly language.
- GeorgeTirebiter 5y agoYes, and... each of the earlier processors had certain 'corner cases' in the way they handled setting (or not) flag bits; DEC s/w had to check these corner cases and execute a proper set of instructions for that specific machine. But yes, conceptually, the orthogonal addressing modes, and 'obvious' instruction names influenced probably 2 generations of students (for the better). The major lesson learned tho, I think, was: never be stingy with address bits! (16 is way too few; and even later 22-bit addresses weren't enough.)