From some even older references (just for fun<g>) we have:
------------ REALITY - Assembly Language Reference Manual (May 1976, http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/microdata/reality/771009A_REALITYasmRef_May76.pdf) Definition: "RQM - Process releases the remainder of its time quantam to the monitor." ------------ R83 Assembly Reference Manual (1987, http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/pickSystems/) Definition: "Release Time Ouantum (RQM) - Upon execution of this instruction, the process gets deactivated and the next process is selected. This process will be reactivated after a small delay. The instruction is useful when you need to wait a short period for some external activity." ----------- From: "Tony Gravagno" The documentation is interesting for at least two reasons. 1) I have an R83 manual in my hands, v5 1990 that has the exact same text as the Microdata text below, except with the words REALITY and Pick interchanged, and one other subtlety: REALITY: "RQM statement causes a one-second sleep, terminating the program's current timeslice." R83: "RQM statement terminates the program's current time-slice." There's no telling which version came first without going back to R81v1 docs. There's probably no way to tell who got the text from who, or by what license or method. There's also no real way to know which implementation actually did a sleep 1 or whether it really just relinquished the Nms timeslice if there was no 'seconds' argument. That RQM and SLEEP are documented as being equivalent only confuses the matter more in this "much ado about nearly nothing" but fun discussion. 2) As I understand it, Unidata was conceived in a dream, and any relation to other Pick platforms was purely coincidental - at least as described in early lawsuits defending the originality of the platform. (Or maybe I'm thinking of Universe?) So how could there be an "original purpose" of a command that was not based on something else? I'm sure that there is some logical reason for this and that we're not looking at a smoking gun from 1991, but the historical significance is intriguing. T From: Bob Wyatt
UniBasic User's Guide, Release 2.1, Copyright 1991 by Unidata, Inc. "The original purpose of RQM was to release remaining execution time reserved for a program, allowing other programs to use the time.
REALITY by Microdata. DATA/BASIC Programming Manual, Series 3.0 - 4.0, Release 4.0, February, 1981 "The time-shared environment of the REALITY system allows concurrent execution of several programs, with each program executing for a specific time period (called a timeslice or quantum) and then
pausing
while other programs continue execution. The RQM statement causes a one-second sleep, terminating the program's current timeslice. The RQM statement may be used in heavy compute loops to allow increased execution speed of other concurrently executing programs by giving
up
time. It may also be used to cause pauses."
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