On Tue 4 Nov, 1997, Henry W Miller <mill0440@gold.tc.umn.edu> wrote:
> 
> well it is kernel related, but not Netbsd.   we all like to dream, don't
> we.
> 
> On Tue, 4 Nov 1997, Paul B Dokas wrote:
> 
> > Subject: Re: Why does mode_t need 32 bits?  (fwd)
> > 
> > > >  Anybody have a spare Cray lying about to use to do a port?
> > > 
> > > Well, I heard that UNICOS development was stopping with release 10,
> > > the current release... :-)
> > > 
> > > Kevin
> > 
> > That would be due to that fact that SGI bought them a while back.  I
> > would guess that they'll try to make IRIX work on Cray hardware.
> > 
> > As for hardware, I was talking with a friend who works over at Cray.
> > He did mention that they've got a lot of hardware just sitting around
> > taking up space.  Maybe someone with some space floor space needs to
> > call them up and ask  8-)
> > 
> 
> At a recient job fair SGI was recuting students (well, after we grad) to
> make one version of unix that would run on everything from the lowest end
> sgi to the highest cray.  They also implied that it would run the same
> binaries!  (if the new crays have MIPS processors expect binary
> compatability across all sgi/cray systems)
> 
> This was before sgi announced they were laying off ~1000 people, so they
> may have changed plans.

With luck they will lay off dead-weight they've acquired, not their technical
folk, or their better Sales and Field Support staff.

> 
> I for one with them luck in that endever.
> 

SGI are planning to pool the Cool Things(TM) from both Unicos and IRIX into
Cellular IRIX, the first cross-platform release of which will be IRIX 6.5
which goes Beta Q1 98 and hopefully shipping Q2/3 98.

Well worth checking out the technical papers at www.sgi.com. Certainly many
of the new things SGI/Cray are doing are as advanced as anything Sun are
doing, and IMHO both are ahead of pretty much everyone else in Unix today.

Someone fancy writing an XFS-alike perhaps?

Anyone's guess as to whether SGI will bother back-porting IRIX to the
installed-base of CRAY-sourced SPARC machines...I'd say not, seeing as they
sold Starfire back to Sun (woops!).