[HECnet] Benchmarks - WHETSTONE.C

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2013-01-16 21:17, Steve Davidson wrote:
The PDP-11 "C" compiler was a buyout.   It started life out as a PASCAL compiler.   The first project leader (J. Bishop) works for Intel - on the West Coast.

I believe that to be incorrect.
I had to search through my archives of stuff, to check, as it didn't match my hazy memories.

The project leader for the DEC PDP-11 C compiler was Thomas Krupinski, and he was the project leader all the way from the beginning to the end. And it was never a PASCAL compiler, nor did it start outside of DEC.

Here is excerpts from a conversation I had with him a number of years ago:

***

> I wouldn't be surprised if DEC C was written in MACRO-11. I very much
> doubt DECUS C was involved anyway.

I suspect you are referring to Digital's PDP-11 C. A
couple years before this project was begun, an
engineer was tasked with investigating if it would be
feasable to   "productize" DECUS C. The engineer
concluded it wasn't. PDP-11 C is written mostly in C,
with a very small amount of code written in MACRO-11.
The compiler compiles itself for the RT-11, RSX and
RSTS/E versions, and is compiled by VAXC (PDP-11C
preceeded DEC C) for a cross compiler running on VMS
and producing PDP-11 code. The compiler will produce
either .obj files or MACRO-11 (or both). The latter
was useful when a member of the RSTS/E group
implemented a CUSP in PDP-11 C while it was still in
beta - Management wouldn't let him release it since it
was compiled with an unreleased product (strange, that
never stopped folks from releasing code written using
the BLISS-11 compiler), so he simply compiled it to
MACRO-11, and checked that in, since MACRO-11 was
supported...

> none used DECUS C as a bootstrap as far as I know.

I can confirm that PDP-11 C did not bootstrap using
DECUS C.



Tom Krupinski
Project leader for PDP-11 C V1.0, V1.1, V1.2
(And the engineer who did the DECUS C investigation)


***

I have not talked with him in ages now...

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                                   || "I'm on a bus
                                                                  ||   on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se                         ||   Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                                         ||   tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol