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The AdaIC News  Fall 1997

In This Edition:

Ada 95: More Platforms, More Vendors, More Choices, and More on the Way

70 Organizations Offering 100 Tools

Memorandum Gives Guidance

Letter from the AJPO

Ada 95 Demo Combines Java Bytecode and Distributed Processing on the Web

AdaIC News to go electronic-only

AJPO Summer Intern

Plug and Play for the Warfighter

Saving money, code, with the COE

DOD Policy/Guidance for COE Usage

Online with COE

Tri-Ada '97 to Emphasize Ada Diversity, Present Expert Speakers

WAdaS '97 Plans for Future

Calendar of Events

Ada 95: More Platforms, More Vendors, More Choices, and More on the Way
14 Vendors, 87 Compilers on Major Systems

When the Ada Joint Program Office (AJPO) first considered the transition to Ada 95, it concluded that it was vital for the most widely used platforms to get validated support as early as possible.

To a significant extent, that was accomplished last year. By the spring of 1996, five vendors had validated 14 compilers -- covering the Patriot missile system, and major platforms from Digital Equipment Corp., Silicon Graphics, Inc., Hewlett-Packard, Windows NT and 95, and the IBM RS/6000.

Since then, those five vendors and 9 others coming on board have been working to spread the range of hosts and targets, and to increase the choices available for important platforms.

By the summer of 1997, the number of vendors had grown to 14, and they were offering 87 validated compilers. The vendors are listed in Table 1; as you can see in Table 2, much of the increase reflects a greater range of options in popular host platform families, with 18 compilers for PC/80x86 platforms and 34 for Sun platforms. Additionally, there is now a validated compiler hosted on the Macintosh.

Coverage has also increased for targets (Table 3): supported platforms now include Motorola MVME chips, Lockheed Martin RAD 6000, Siemens Nixdorf RM 200 processors, and a number of simulators.

The nonvalidated world

Strictly speaking, compiler validation is necessary only for producing the executable code that will be fielded in a DOD project. For those of you doing work on your own, or preliminary work prior to producing fielded code, there's always been the freely available GNU Ada 95 Translator (the GNAT compiler) and it has been ported to several platforms. (See Table 4 for list of GNAT's known ports.)

Also, the Public Ada Library includes the AVLAda9X Ada 95 compiler for MS-DOS. The Ada Information Clearinghouse -- 800/232-4211 -- can give you information on obtaining these compilers.

Table 1

Who's offering compilers?

Vendor # of compilers
Ada Core Technologies (ACT)6
ACT/Digital Equipment Corp.1
ACT/On-Line Applications 1
ACT/Siemens Nixdorf 1
ACT/Silicon Graphics, Inc. 5
ACT/Tenon Intersystems 1
Aonix (Thomson) 12
Concurrent 2
Green Hills 17
Intermetrics 5
Irvine 10
OC Systems 2
R.R. Software 6
Rational 18
Table 2

On which platforms are compilers hosted?

DEC 8
IBM 4
Macintosh 1
Motorola 1
PowerMaxion 2
Siemens Nixdorf 1
SGI 7
Sun 34

Table 3

For which platforms are compilers targeted?

DEC 6
HP 10
Heurikon 6
IBM 4
LockMar RAD6000 2
Macintosh 1
Motorola 14
PC/80x86 15
PowerMaxion 2
PowerStack 1
Raytheon EWCC 1
SGI 7
Siemens Nixdorf 1
Simulators 4
Sun 14

Table 4

Where has the GNU Ada 95 Translator (GNAT) compiler been ported?

NOTE: Not all are validated

Alpha Digital Unix 4.x
Alpha OpenVMS 7.x
Alpha Windows NT
HP HPUX 10.x
SGI IRIX
SNI Sinix
Sparc Solaris
Sparc SunOS 4.1.x
PowerPC AIX 4.x
PowerPC MachTen
80x86 Linux
80x86 Windows 95
80x86 Windows NT
80x86 IBM OS/2
80x86 DOS
80x86 Solaris 2.5.1
80x86 SCO UNIX
80x86 FreeBSD
80x86 NetBSD
80x86 Nextstep
DECstation Ultrix
m68k Nextstep
m68k SunOS
m68k MachTen
m68k Amiga DOS

cross compiler (bare machine) targets:

ERC32 Sparc V7 / RTEMS
PowerPC / RTEMS
1750a
i960 VxWorks
m68k VxWorks

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