MULTICS OPERATING SYSTEM

The Multics operating system project (by MIT in the 1960s)

Contents

Introduction3

Discussion4

Development history of Multics4

Current Status5

Practical applications of Multics7

Multics Insights8

Conclusion9

References11

The Multics operating system project (by MIT in the 1960s)

Introduction

Many timesharing operating systems have been established till today. Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) marked an important milestone in the computing framework at MIT as a joint project in 1965. Multics computer system was developed to be used for information management. Modern time sharing systems are based on this Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) timesharing operating system. Unix is developed on the basis of Multics and used since its release four decades ago. Multics has brought the variety and magnitude of changes to the modern computing world today. Multics brought a universal concept through the ides of timesharing in the modern computing industry, although it has not been in implementation these days but it was sued in production for more than 30 years since after development. Multics gives the impression to have an inheritance of great descendants. In the early days of its implementation, Multics was a significant open source and software advancement application, even the concept of cloud computing is established on the basis of time sharing philosophy of Multics.

Multics was meant to be a serious name that suggested the intent of the system. Multics development was incredibly a difficult research during its early days. In such a programming environment, it was indeed a very difficult task. At that time, programming was done with batch-processing units and punched cards, or there were only mainframe computers. We can say that, in early days of its development, Multics (timesharing system) was developed from scratch on mainframe computers. John McCarthy advocated and proposed the concept of timesharing in Multics. Multics was developed with the vision of enhancing interactive computing. For time-sharing, significant different machine, the GE 645 was found as the hardware change to develop Multics. Multics faced limitations with geographical dispersion; however the availability of CTSS which provided remote access assisted to overcome such limitations.

Modern computing industry will require a different approach today for doing the same task. PL/I language was used earlier for the development of Multics. At that time, use of a higher-level language had the purpose of amplifying the effectiveness of each programmer. However, in the modern strategy, we will emphasize to pick a simpler language instead of PL/I.

Discussion

Development history of Multics

The Multics project was started in the year 1965 at MIT. Later on, significant changes were brought by introducing segmentation and paging in the access control and processing addressor respectively. The others need of devices were achieved by deging and implementing a completely new Generalized Input/ Output controller. These deigns were implemented to accommodate tapes, disks and teletypewriters without putting burden to processors (Gedda, 2009).

The project at MIT went through different phases while preparing software. The development phase was the first one which included major ideas blocking. Different designs were presented by software designers. However, for achieving maximum maintainability and lucidity of the system, ...