Make LispM code FREE (fwd)

[P. T. Withington]

On 4/3/98 02:07, Chris Bitmead wrote:

>Is Open Genera (or whatever it's called) for the DEC Alpha, an
>operating system unto itself, or does it run as an application
>under UNIX?

It runs as an app under unix, emulating a Symbolics Ivory-based Lisp 
Machine, which runs all of Genera which is "an operating system unto 
itself".  The Open Genera machine appears on your net as a separate 
machine with its own IP address and supports all the facilities normally 
associated with a Lisp Machine.  It utilizes Unix VM to efficiently 
emulate LispM virtual memory, and the GC is slightly changed to take 
advantage of that for efficiency (that is, all the GC features of the 
original chip are _not_ emulated).  Another way of viewing it:  Symbolics 
also sold co-processor cards for the Macintosh and Sun VME-based 
workstations that utilzed the host's peripherals for network, file, and 
other I/O.  Open Genera is essentially a software co-processor.  It 
piggy-backs on the Alpha network, you can assign it file partitions to 
create LMFS filesystems, it uses X for its console.