Conference heron::euro_swas_ai

120.0. "RISC Lisp info (?)" by HERON::ROACH (TANSTAAFL !) Wed Jul 19 1989 10:52

I'm posting the following for 2 reasons:
    
    1) I think it is of good general pre-sales interest, and
    2) if anyone can offer Malcolm any help, it would be appreciated
    
    Pat
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                      I N T E R O F F I C E   M E M O R A N D U M

                                        Date:     18-Jul-1989 09:09pm ETE
                                        From:     
                                                  BLISS@CSGDEC@MRGATE@ROBUST@MRO
                                        Dept:      
                                        Tel No:    

TO:  pat roach@VBO


Subject: FYI - lisp activity at Ericsson

Pat,

Dan Merriman told me of a large hardware deal (2,000+ workstations) at 
Ericsson that depends, to some extent, on the availability of lisp on 
our risc machines.

Ericsson has written their switch generic SDE in Portable Standard 
Lisp on SUN.  Now they are looking for a way to get that software onto
our risc boxes.

Attached is a note I sent to the account manager, Hans Wilhelmson, with
the information I could gather relative to his situation.

As noted, there may be an opportunity for service revenue.

Is this of interest?

Regards,

Malcolm

cc: Hans Wihelmson
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From:	CSGDEC::BLISS        18-JUL-1989 14:50
To:	NM%STAKAI1::WILHELMSON,BLISS       
Subj:	lisp for Ericsson

Hans,

Here's what information I have assembled about lisp as it relates to 
your business with Ericsson.

In theory Portable Standard Lisp (PSL) should be a subset of common lisp, 
but actually there are some exceptions to the rule.  I asked our lisp expert, 
Walter Vanroggen about this.  Here are excerpts from his response:

	"No, PSL really isn't a subset of Common Lisp.  In recent years 
	the Utah folks have implemented some Common Lisp compatibility 
	stuff on top of PSL, but chances are Ericsson (or whoever wrote the 
	code they're using) was using older PSL implementations...
	It certainly looks like an excellent opportunity to provide some 
	software services to help do the port from PSL to common lisp."
  
Ibuki Common Lisp from Ibuki [ US post: 1447 N. Shoreline Boulevard, Mountain 
View, CA  94043, phone: (415) 961-4996 ] seems to be the best lisp option 
currently available for our risc machines.  John Wikoff at the AITC-SELECT 
has been researching their product and found that they support X-windows, so 
their product will run on DECwindows.  Their support for CLOS (Object 
Representation Standard) although incomplete is the best that is currently 
available on any platform.

I'm interested in staying involved with this activity so please keep me
informed, or let me know if I can be of assistance.
 
Cheers,

Malcolm