On 3 Mar 2003 at 13:58, Gavin Scott wrote:

> One can argue whether "Emulator" is the correct technical term for
> this ("Simulator" is probably more correct from a dictionary point of
> view) but the world seems to have generally settled on the use of
> "Emulator" for this type of thing.

I have been having discussions about "Platform Emulation" and
"Platform Simulation" with some people. I view them differently, so
I'd like to introduce the latter definition, for sake of argument.

I agree that "Emulation" should be what we've been talking about when
we discuss a "binary" solution. In other words, we can pick up our
binaries from our existing 3000 hardware and run them unchanged under
the "Emulator".

I've been calling Platform Simulation software such as MPUX from
Ordina-Denkart or the BiTech-Sungard tools, or whatever other tools
are out there that build some of the MPE environment on the target
platform. You still need to take your source code to the new platform
and compile it there, with perhaps making some modifications to fit
the Simulator. The Simulator may give some of the look and feel of
MPE by providing a command interpreter, or message file workalikes,
or an intrinsic library to interface to the target OS, or whatever.
But, that isn't the same as being able to take your existing
environment, store it off on the 3000 and restore it onto the
platform running the Emulator and load and go.

I think we need to be clear in what we mean by Emulation or
Simulation because the definitions can apply to both scenarios
described above. But, we do need a means to differentiate between the
two, because they are different, even though the end result of moving
your existing applications to another platform is what is received by
both.

Regards,


M.
--
Mark Klein
http://www.dis.com
PGP Key Available