> >> What's new here is that VMware is the first program not only to make a simple > >> sandbox for user programs (like any protected mode O/S does - Linux and NT > >> both do this), but instead it's "sandbox" is actually emulating all the > >> protection violations as if the sandbox is the entire machine, and not one > >> task in many. > > > >Not the first. The second. Locus (now owned by Platinum, the same > >company which also "ate" Memco) was the first, with its revolutionary > >version 4.0 (currently 4.1.1) of "Merge". Unfortunately, they didn't > >make it available for Linux, but only for some other x86-based > >UNIXes. It must be admitted, though, that VMware is much more > >superior and ambitious than Merge. IMHO, it is the most revolutionary > >product I've ever seen. > > Folks, I hope you do not confuse "first" with "first on X86". > The notion of fully virtual was fully available on real OS's > in the early 70's. There were many "conceptual" operating systems > that implemented complete virtual machines, at that time. > The most famous one is, of course, IBM's VM, that is still > marching on. VM first ran on an IBM 360 very late model, and > mainly on IBM/370 (hence, it was called VM/370). > > Everything on that system is virtualized, user dimension and > OS dimension. Control registers, user registers, CPU state - > the works. > > VM is still available (and in production) today - zillions of > versions and over 25 years later. Of course, we mentioned VM/360/370/390, and when arguing about "first" or "second", we referred to 386 and up (8086 could always be virtualized by 386 and up, so even virtual 8086 is not a new thing, but only virtual 386, and of course Pentium) and we even mentioned x86. The quotations in the message that you replied to, didn't include this mention, so if you missed the original message, it looked like we referred to "first in history", but again - we referred ONLY to 386/Pentium. In any case, as I already wrote, while the 360/370/390 had the required infrastructure for self virtualizibilty, Intel lacks it, and it is very tricky to do it. Many years were needed since the 386 was released till the first VM implementation (Merge 4.0) was released. -- Eli Marmor
