Emulation hurdles get examined at symposium

PA-RISC expert says design may be more complex, time to market longer

While a European software company is working on a prototype of an HP 3000 hardware emulator for a possible prototype before year’s end, another firm based in the US believes the project could be complex enough to take much longer. Gavin Scott of Allegro Consultants used part of his talk during the latest Interex Solutions Symposium to caution customers not to expect too much too soon from anyone’s emulation efforts.

But Scott also added that he believes the time to market for any software that transforms Intel-based PCs into HP 3000s won’t be a crucial factor in homesteading. For the next several years, he said, a majority of the installed base will be purchasing an ample supply of 3000 hardware of recent vintage, rather than migrating.

“Between and 50 and 80 percent of the total 3000 customers out there are going to stay on MPE at least for three to five years,” Scott said. As vice president of a company that’s offering MPE technical support and products for the 3000, as well as considering an entry in the emulator derby, Scott has a viewpoint biased toward the market’s status quo. But he said he can see some movement toward migration — from customers who can afford its cost.

“There are going to be a lot of people working on migrations during that time, and obsoleting the 3000, but it’s primarily the large customers,” Scott said. “The medium and smaller customers say their short-term plan is ‘Tell me how I can not do anything, how the homesteading stuff can be viable.’ “

Citing good availability of 3000 systems on the used market, and three more years of support from HP, Scott added that “At the moment I think the 3000’s future looks better than it has in the last couple of years since HP’s [end of support] announcement.”

Complex IO

Scott said during an explanation of what an emulator could do that the thorniest parts of fooling an Intel-based PC into behaving like a PA-RISC system lay in mapping to peripherals.

“Where it gets really hard is when you have to simulate the whole IO system, all the peripheral cards, and even potentially the peripherals themselves that the MPE operating system is expecting to see,” he said. “That’s where most of the time will be placed doing emulator development.”

At the meeting, customers and developers began to ask HP engineers about the possibility of the vendor creating pseudo or pass-through drivers to aid in an emulator’s IO. HP’s Mike Paivinen did not affirm that HP would do this project, but the idea was not dismissed immediately, either.

Collaboration to share risk

Scott said that he’s been in communication with some engineers at SRI, the European firm which is already selling software that emulates VAX hardware on Intel’s Pentium systems. OpenMPE board chairman Jon Backus suggested that one way to tackle the project might involve several companies collaborating on a project which the OpenMPE group would fund through membership dues. Scott said that funding an emulator is the most serious challenge, in his view, at the moment. But whatever design route SRI takes, he’s wishing the prospective competitor the best of luck.

“If they succeed, then more power to them,” Scott said. “An emulator would be a valuable addition to the HP 3000 customer’s range of options, even more so as time goes on. So an SRI emulator is better than no emulator if the rest of us can’t figure out how to fund the development of the darn thing.”

Scott said the 3000 marketplace would be more comfortable with a free emulator “that we could all use, but at the moment the intersection of the people who have the capabilities to do an emulator doesn’t include those who are independently wealthy.”

Another company, Strobe Data, is marketing an HP 1000 emulator and had expressed an interest in doing an HP 3000 product. Scott noted after the meeting that “We’ve had some fruitful discussions with Strobe, and if there were something to collaborate on I think we’d get along with them quite well.” Any effort among all three firms looks doubtful, he added.

“Strobe and SRI are competitors in the DEC emulation world,” Scott said, “so that makes a three-way collaboration unlikely — though it’s possible that we could offer assistance to both parties if we’re not doing our own emulator and not in a full-blown collaboration with Strobe Data. I’m open to any and all discussions, but my impression is that an SRI/Allegro collaboration is not one of the most likely scenarios.”

Competing with used systems

Emulators give the 3000 hardware user a future with fewer limits, but customers will have a more certain source of systems that will compete with software emulation: the growing pool of used HP 3000 servers.

Scott noted this might make the early marketing of an emulator tougher, since “our competition in 2004 would be people selling used N-Class systems on eBay for $5,000. Today’s $175,000 system could depreciate, and it’s going to be hard to sell a piece of software that will have poorer performance than any N-Class 3000.”

HP did confirm that an emulator would not have to be developed by next year to maintain the HP license commitment for emulator-based MPE. “This [HP license] draft has no expiration,” said HP’s Jeff Vance, who helped write the language in the HP proposal for new MPE licenses.

Support from third parties for an emulator is an essential problem which OpenMPE can turn toward today, according to Vance. Licensing issues with popular software vendors remain to be worked out.

“OpenMPE may be stalled on an emulator, but that doesn’t mean OpenMPE as an organization has to be stalled,” Vance said. “There are other issues like third-party software models, where OpenMPE could champion licensing deals from third parties, whose licenses — like those from Speedware, Cognos, Bradmark, or Adager — might be tied to a 3000. Those other licenses might not automatically carry over today.”

Getting initial investment from some kinds of customers in an emulator project may be difficult, according to new OpenMPE board member Donna Garverick. At her employer, “they’re squabbling about monitors right now, so spending even $500 on an emulator that may never appear might be a really tough sell.”