Date: 22 SEP 1980 0351-EDT
From: Moon at MIT-AI (David A. Moon)
Subject: New system release
To: INFO-LISPM at MIT-AI
System 44.2 with microcode 692 is now the "installed new" system. It is
currently installed on CADR's 3, 6, and 8, and should migrate to more shortly.
The main changes from system 40.1 of note (besides bug fixes) are:
The process system has been revised. Processes are now flavor objects and
there are some new scheduler features (I don't know if the new scheduler
features claim to work yet.)
Use of TOPS-20 for file storage is really supposed to work now.
There are floating-point arrays. The array type symbol is ART-FLOAT.
These are intended to reduce consing when doing floating-point array
computations. Accessing a floating-point array is actually somewhat slower
than accessing an ART-Q array with flonums in it, but storing a "temporary"
flonum into an ART-FLOAT array does not create a "permanent" flonum that
would later need to be garbage-collected. All floating-point arithmetic
operations are now 4.5 microseconds (about 20%) faster, due to removal of
some overhead.
Last modified: 2025/06/05 08:38:10 (UTC) by ams