Formal adoption of multiprocessing hooks for its Advanced RISC Computing specification by the Advanced Computing Environment initiative’s executive advisory board is now just a tick away, says MIPS Computer Systems Inc. However, finalised application interface specifications for its shrink-wrapped Unix system software are still some way off. There will be one binary interface that will cover ACE members’ uni- and multi-pro-essing requirements, but there will be more than one implementation of the ABI, MIPS says: one for every version of OSF/1 and Unix in use by the ACE crowd. Before that can happen an API must be established. A high-level Applications Programming Interface specification, which is complete, will be joined by an agreed lower-level definition any day now – although work on it is not expected to be complete much before the last quarter. The ABI will follow, sometime after. Finally, finished product will have to go through each vend-or’s testing and release schedule. The Open Software Foundation’s Distributed Computing and Distributed Management Environment technologies – which are also part of ACE’s brief – will be rolled into the specifications as and when their components arrive. That’s how Santa Cruz Operation Inc will be staging releases of its ACE Open Desktop Unix bundle, by incorporating the specs as they come along. ACE has apparently been trying to set a date for rolling out all the hardware, all the software, and all the operating systems which are ready thus far: June was suggested, but that reportedly didn’t go down too well with Microsoft Corp, which would prefer the third or fourth quarter. And those initial ACE Open Desktop Development Kits that Santa Cruz has started delivering, but isn’t recommending be used for development purposes, have gone to OEM customers Acer Group Inc, Digital Equipment Corp, MIPS, Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA and Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG, and software houses Aires Inc, Autodesk Inc, Informix Software Inc and Oracle Systems Corp.
