28 May
2010
28 May
'10
5:29 a.m.
On 5/28/2010 1:01 AM, Eric Smith<eric at brouhaha.com> wrote:
On 05/27/2010 10:30 AM, Dave McGuire wrote:
Eric is correct, at least in my experience on the XMP-48 that was at
PSC. VAX/VMS front ends were used to edit programs and submit them to
to the Cray (running COS), and some time later the results would return.
I sent code to someone else on a different front end, and as I
understand, all he had to do was mod the script to submit the jobs for
the local toolset. No changes to the code.
KJ
> Especially by it's being an
attached processor, nearly all Cray-1
> software (save for things like libraries) would be specific to whatever
> front-end system was in use.
Not usually. The operating system needs to
know a little bit about
what's connected to the I/O channels (including the front-end systems),
but user-space software, including applications, normally relies on
operating system services from COS or UniCOS running natively on the
main CPU. Application software didn't normally interact directly with
the front-end systems any more than than application software on IBM
mainframes interacts with the mainframe's service processor. The
front-end systems were there to boot and manage the system and provide
I/O services for the operating system. Usually when sites upgraded from
a Cray-1 to an XMP they didn't have to change their application software
at all, even though the front end was completely different.