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Just to add my 2 cents. Unix was designed to operate on mini computers in which the CPU operates on RISC technology, where as Linux was designed to operate on micro computers where the CPU operates on SISC technology.
Historical one of the advantages of a true RISC Unix over SISC BSD\Linux is that CPU clustering is most often part of the core operating system design rather than an add on feature.
Unix was designed to operate on mini computers in which the CPU operates on SISC technology, where as Linux was designed to operate on micro computers where the CPU operates on RISK technology.
What?
CPU architectures like ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, etc. are RISC; x86 (the platform Linux was originally developed for) is CISC. Linux has been ported to RISC architectures, but it wasn't originally designed for RISC architectures.
Modern x86-CPUs are in fact something like a mix of both worlds, to the outside they behave as classical CISC-CPUs, internally they work on a more "RISC-like" instrunction set.
CPU architectures like ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, etc. are RISC; x86 (the platform Linux was originally developed for) is CISC. Linux has been ported to RISC architectures, but it wasn't originally designed for RISC architectures.
ACK! Yes I stand corrected as I inverted SISC and RISC in my post.
Unix was designed to operate on mini computers in which the CPU operates on SISC technology, where as Linux was designed to operate on micro computers where the CPU operates on RISK technology.
The aim behind the creation of Unix was to have a system, that is portable to other computers independend of their processor architecture, opposed to at that time common operating systems, that only could be used on one architecture.
The aim behind the creation of Unix was to have a system, that is portable to other computers independend of their processor architecture, opposed to at that time common operating systems, that only could be used on one architecture.
This is true in concept, but UNIX was developed before the micro computer architecture was invented.
In 1972, Unix was rewritten in the C programming language, contrary to the general notion at the time "that something as complex as an operating system, which must deal with time-critical events, had to be written exclusively in assembly language".[5] The migration from assembly language to the higher-level language C resulted in much more portable software, requiring only a relatively small amount of machine-dependent code to be replaced when porting Unix to other computing platforms.
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