Multics

Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) was an extraordinarily influential early time-sharing operating system.

Overview

Initial planning and development for Multics started in 1964. Originally it was a cooperative project led by MIT (with Fernando Corbató), along with General Electric and Bell Labs. Bell Labs dropped out in 1969, and in 1970 GE's computer business, including Multics, was taken over by Honeywell.

Related Topics:
1964 - MIT - Fernando Corbató - General Electric - Bell Labs - 1969 - 1970 - Honeywell

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Multics was conceived as a commercial product for GE, and it did achieve that for Honeywell, although it was not a very successful one. However, it had a powerful impact in the computer field, due to its many novel and valuable ideas. Although it was much derided at the time by its critics http://www.multicians.org/myths.html, history has shown these complaints to be canards.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It had numerous features intended to result in high availability, so that it would produce a computing utility, similar to the telephone and electricity services. To achieve this, in addition to being modular in software structure, the hardware was too, and the system could grow in size by simply adding more of the appropriate resource - computing power, main memory, disk storage, etc. Separate Access Control Lists on every file provided flexible information sharing, but also provided complete privacy when needed. It contained a number of standard mechanisms to allow engineers to analyze the performance of the system, as well as a number of adaptive performance optimization mechanisms.

Related Topics:
Computing utility - Telephone - Electricity - Access Control List

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~