Japan yesterday became the first location in the world to hear the official announcement that the Open Software Foundation had concluded its Architecture-Neutral Distribution Format Request for Technology, Anita Byrnes writes from Tokyo. It has settled on the TDF technology from the Electronics Division of the UK Defence Research Agency, formerly the Royal Signals & Radar Establishment, as the core technology for the distribution format. Dr Rob Morel, managing director of the Foundation in Tokyo, made the announcement, noting that four products had been evaluated: HP-Code+ from Hewlett-Packard Co with the University of Virginia; PAL from Peritus Inc; TDF; and ULS from Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG. Reasons for the choice of TDF it stands for Ten15 Distribution Format and is a high-level intermediate language compiler, included its wide support of programming languages such as ANSI C, Fortran, C++, Cobol and ADA. It had reference sites on a MIPS Computer Systems Inc RISC and a VAXstation and offered performance within 5% of that of native compilers, with the smallest ratio of ANDF program size to ordinary compiler executable size of 1.3. Dr Morel indicated that the reason for the six-month delay in making the announcement was that since last year the Foundation had been busy confirming with computer vendors and software houses that they would support the format, and that it was both technically feasible and commercially viable. Use of applications binary interfaces for software portability, as supported by Unix International Inc and AT&T Co, was a short-term solution, he said. Architecture-Neutral Distribution Format technology offered advantages for vendors, software supplier and end users. Hardware vendors will be able to change their underlying architecture without losing access to existing software libraries, costing them less to carry a diverse hardware range; software developers will be able to concentrate on the functionality of their software instead of the issue of developing vers ions on different architectures; and users will have the benefits of ease of distribution of a wider range of mass market applications and better protection of investments.
