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61-522: The DCE 1.0 reference implementation only allows such constructs as size_is(len) , or possibly size_is(len-1) . MSRPC allows much more complex constructs such as size_is(len / 2 - 1) and even length_is ((max & ~0x7) + 0x7) , a common expression in DCOM IDL files. MSRPC was used by Microsoft to seamlessly create a client/server model in Windows NT , with very little effort. For example,

122-432: A dedicated x64 edition ) has x64 editions. The first version of Windows NT to support ARM64 devices with Qualcomm processors was Windows 10, version 1709 . This is a full version of Windows, rather than the cut-down Windows RT . The minimum hardware specification required to run each release of the professional workstation version of Windows NT has been fairly slow-moving until the 6.0 (Vista) release, which requires

183-513: A taskbar and Start menu ), which originally appeared in Windows 95 . The first release was given version number 3.1 to match the contemporary 16-bit Windows; magazines of that era claimed the number was also used to make that version seem more reliable than a ".0" release. Also the Novell IPX protocol was apparently licensed only to 3.1 versions of Windows software. The NT version number

244-455: A 64-bit kernel and 64-bit memory addressing. Windows NT is a group or family of products — like Windows is a group or family. Windows NT is a sub-grouping of Windows. The first version of Windows NT, 3.1 , was produced for workstation and server computers. It was commercially focused — and intended to complement consumer versions of Windows that were based on MS-DOS (including Windows 1.0 through Windows 3.1x ). In 1996, Windows NT 4.0

305-401: A TCP/IP stack derived at first from a STREAMS -based stack from Spider Systems , then later rewritten in-house). Windows NT 3.1 was the first version of Windows to use 32-bit flat virtual memory addressing on 32-bit processors. Its companion product, Windows 3.1, used segmented addressing and switches from 16-bit to 32-bit addressing in pages. Windows NT 3.1 featured a core kernel providing

366-466: A high speed communication system ( Gigabit Ethernet is common). A Linux Beowulf cluster is an example of a loosely coupled system. Tightly coupled systems perform better and are physically smaller than loosely coupled systems, but have historically required greater initial investments and may depreciate rapidly; nodes in a loosely coupled system are usually inexpensive commodity computers and can be recycled as independent machines upon retirement from

427-471: A layered design architecture that consists of two main components, user mode and kernel mode . Programs and subsystems in user mode are limited in terms of what system resources they have access to, while the kernel mode has unrestricted access to the system memory and external devices. Kernel mode in Windows NT has full access to the hardware and system resources of the computer. The Windows NT kernel

488-549: A master/slave multiprocessor system of microprocessors is the Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 16 desktop computer which came out in February 1982 and ran the multi-user/multi-tasking Xenix operating system, Microsoft's version of UNIX (called TRS-XENIX). The Model 16 has two microprocessors: an 8-bit Zilog Z80 CPU running at 4 MHz, and a 16-bit Motorola 68000 CPU running at 6 MHz. When

549-418: A minimum of 15 GB of free disk space, a tenfold increase in free disk space alone over the previous version, and the 2021 10.0 (11) release which excludes most systems built before 2018. Multiprocessing Multiprocessing is the use of two or more central processing units (CPUs) within a single computer system . The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor or

610-478: A number of ways, including asymmetric multiprocessing (ASMP), non-uniform memory access (NUMA) multiprocessing, and clustered multiprocessing. In a master/slave multiprocessor system, the master CPU is in control of the computer and the slave CPU(s) performs assigned tasks. The CPUs can be completely different in terms of speed and architecture. Some (or all) of the CPUs can share a common bus, each can also have

671-656: A portable operating system, compatible with OS/2 and POSIX and supporting multiprocessing , in October 1988. When development started in November 1989, Windows NT was to be known as OS/2 3.0, the third version of the operating system developed jointly by Microsoft and IBM . To ensure portability, initial development was targeted at the Intel i860 XR RISC processor , switching to the MIPS R3000 in late 1989, and then

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732-541: A private bus (for private resources), or they may be isolated except for a common communications pathway. Likewise, the CPUs can share common RAM and/or have private RAM that the other processor(s) cannot access. The roles of master and slave can change from one CPU to another. Two early examples of a mainframe master/slave multiprocessor are the Bull Gamma 60 and the Burroughs B5000 . An early example of

793-520: A revision of Windows NT, even though the Windows NT name itself has not been used in many other Windows releases since Windows NT 4.0 in 1996. Windows NT provides many more features than other Windows releases, among them being support for multiprocessing , multi-user systems , a "pure" 32-bit kernel with 32-bit memory addressing, support for instruction sets other than x86 , and many other system services such as Active Directory and more. Newer versions of Windows NT support 64-bit computing , with

854-475: A stripped-down version of the Windows operating system. Windows 11 is the first non-server version of Windows NT that does not support 32-bit platforms. The 64-bit versions of Windows NT were originally intended to run on Itanium and DEC Alpha ; the latter was used internally at Microsoft during early development of 64-bit Windows. This continued for some time after Microsoft publicly announced that it

915-444: A system API, running in supervisor mode (ring 0 in x86; referred to in Windows NT as "kernel mode" on all platforms), and a set of user-space environments with their own APIs which included the new Win32 environment, an OS/2 1.3 text-mode environment and a POSIX environment. The full preemptive multitasking kernel could interrupt running tasks to schedule other tasks, without relying on user programs to voluntarily give up control of

976-555: A very small amount written in assembly language . C is mostly used for the kernel code while C++ is mostly used for user-mode code. Assembly language is avoided where possible because it would impede portability . The following are the releases of Windows based on the Windows NT technology. Windows NT 3.1 to 3.51 incorporated the Program Manager and File Manager from the Windows 3.1x series. Windows NT 4.0 onwards replaced those programs with Windows Explorer (including

1037-525: Is a hybrid kernel ; the architecture comprises a simple kernel , hardware abstraction layer (HAL), drivers, and a range of services (collectively named Executive ), which all exist in kernel mode. The booting process of Windows NT begins with NTLDR in versions before Vista and the Windows Boot Manager in Vista and later. The boot loader is responsible for accessing the file system on

1098-473: Is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1 , was released on July 27, 1993. Originally made for the workstation , office, and server markets, the Windows NT line was made available to consumers with the release of Windows XP in 2001. The underlying technology of Windows NT continues to exist to this day with incremental changes and improvements, with

1159-463: Is achieved on IA-32 via an integrated DOS Virtual Machine – although this feature is not available on other architectures. NT has supported per-object (file, function, and role) access control lists allowing a rich set of security permissions to be applied to systems and services. NT has also supported Windows network protocols, inheriting the previous OS/2 LAN Manager networking, as well as TCP/IP networking (for which Microsoft used to implement

1220-399: Is generally used to denote that scenario. Other authors prefer to refer to the operating system techniques as multiprogramming and reserve the term multiprocessing for the hardware aspect of having more than one processor. The remainder of this article discusses multiprocessing only in this hardware sense. In Flynn's taxonomy , multiprocessors as defined above are MIMD machines. As

1281-466: Is not now generally used for marketing purposes, but is still used internally, and said to reflect the degree of changes to the core of the operating system. However, for application compatibility reasons, Microsoft kept the major version number as 6 in releases following Vista, but changed it later to 10 in Windows 10. The build number is an internal identifier used by Microsoft's developers and beta testers. Starting with Windows 8.1 , Microsoft changed

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1342-411: Is sometimes contrasted with multitasking , which may use just a single processor but switch it in time slices between tasks (i.e. a time-sharing system ). Multiprocessing however means true parallel execution of multiple processes using more than one processor. Multiprocessing doesn't necessarily mean that a single process or task uses more than one processor simultaneously; the term parallel processing

1403-748: The Distributed Computing Environment 1.2 reference implementation from the Open Software Foundation , but has been copyrighted by Microsoft. DCE/RPC was originally commissioned by the Open Software Foundation, an industry consortium to set vendor- and technology-neutral open standards for computing infrastructure. None of the Unix vendors (now represented by the Open Group ), wanted to use

1464-596: The Intel i386 in 1990. Microsoft also continued parallel development of the DOS-based and less resource -demanding Windows environment, resulting in the release of Windows 3.0 in May 1990. Windows 3.0 was eventually so successful that Microsoft decided to change the primary application programming interface for the still unreleased NT OS/2 (as it was then known) from an extended OS/2 API to an extended Windows API . This decision caused tension between Microsoft and IBM and

1525-752: The PowerPC processor in 1995, specifically PReP -compliant systems such as the IBM ThinkPad Power Series laptops and Motorola PowerStack series; but despite meetings between Michael Spindler and Bill Gates, not on the Power Macintosh as the PReP compliant Power Macintosh project failed to ship. Intergraph Corporation ported Windows NT to its Clipper architecture and later announced an intention to port Windows NT 3.51 to Sun Microsystems ' SPARC architecture, in conjunction with

1586-590: The Windows 8 -derived Windows RT on October 26, 2012, and the use of Windows NT, rather than Windows CE, in Windows Phone 8 . The original Xbox and Xbox 360 run a custom operating system based upon a heavily modified version of Windows 2000 , an approach that Microsoft engineer Don Box called "fork and run". It exports APIs similar to those found in Microsoft Windows , such as Direct3D . The Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S consoles use

1647-649: The Windows Preinstallation Environment , which is a lightweight version of Windows NT made for deployment of the operating system. Since Windows Vista, the Windows installation files, as well as the preinstallation environment used to install Windows, are stored in the Windows Imaging Format . It is possible to use the Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) tool to install Windows from

1708-572: The Windows Server domains protocols are entirely MSRPC based, as is Microsoft's DNS administrative tool. Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5's administrative front-ends are all MSRPC client/server applications, and its MAPI was made more secure by "proxying" MAPI over a set of simple MSRPC functions that enable encryption at the MSRPC layer without involving the MAPI protocol. MSRPC is derived from

1769-466: The 68000 CPU. The Z-80 can be used to do other tasks. The earlier TRS-80 Model II , which was released in 1979, could also be considered a multiprocessor system as it had both a Z-80 CPU and an Intel 8021 microcontroller in the keyboard. The 8021 made the Model II the first desktop computer system with a separate detachable lightweight keyboard connected with by a single thin flexible wire, and likely

1830-511: The Alpha NT 5 (Windows 2000) release had reached RC1 status. On January 5, 2011, Microsoft announced that the next major version of the Windows NT family will include support for the ARM architecture . Microsoft demonstrated a preliminary version of Windows (version 6.2.7867) running on an ARM-based computer at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show . This eventually led to the commercial release of

1891-554: The CPU, as in Windows 3.1 Windows applications (although MS-DOS applications were preemptively multitasked in Windows starting with Windows/386 ). Notably, in Windows NT 3.x, several I/O driver subsystems, such as video and printing, were user-mode subsystems. In Windows NT 4.0, the video, server, and printer spooler subsystems were moved into kernel mode. Windows NT's first GUI was strongly influenced by (and programmatically compatible with) that from Windows 3.1; Windows NT 4.0's interface

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1952-476: The DEC Alpha. Windows NT and VMS memory management , processes , and scheduling are very similar. Windows NT's process management differs by implementing threading , which DEC did not implement until VMS 7.0 in 1995. Like VMS, Windows NT's kernel mode code distinguishes between the "kernel", whose primary purpose is to implement processor- and architecture-dependent functions, and the "executive". This

2013-589: The Version API Helper functions' behavior. If an application is not manifested for Windows 8.1 or later, the API will always return version 6.2, which is the version number of Windows 8 . This is because the manifest feature was introduced with Windows 8.1, to replace GetVersion and related functions. In order to prevent Intel x86 -specific code from slipping into the operating system, due to developers being used to developing on x86 chips, Windows NT 3.1

2074-662: The Windows NT driver model, and is incompatible with older driver frameworks. With Windows 2000 , the Windows NT driver model was enhanced to become the Windows Driver Model , which was first introduced with Windows 98 , but was based on the NT driver model. Windows Vista added native support for the Windows Driver Foundation , which is also available for Windows XP , Windows Server 2003 and to an extent, Windows 2000 . Microsoft decided to create

2135-665: The Xeon processors via a common pipe and the Opteron processors via independent pathways to the system RAM . Chip multiprocessors, also known as multi-core computing, involves more than one processor placed on a single chip and can be thought of the most extreme form of tightly coupled multiprocessing. Mainframe systems with multiple processors are often tightly coupled. Loosely coupled multiprocessor systems (often referred to as clusters ) are based on multiple standalone relatively low processor count commodity computers interconnected via

2196-613: The ability to allocate tasks between them. There are many variations on this basic theme, and the definition of multiprocessing can vary with context, mostly as a function of how CPUs are defined ( multiple cores on one die , multiple dies in one package , multiple packages in one system unit , etc.). According to some on-line dictionaries, a multiprocessor is a computer system having two or more processing units (multiple processors) each sharing main memory and peripherals, in order to simultaneously process programs. A 2009 textbook defined multiprocessor system similarly, but noting that

2257-556: The boot drive, starting the kernel , and loading boot-time device drivers into memory. Once all the boot and system drivers have been loaded, the kernel starts the Session Manager Subsystem . This process launches winlogon , which allows the user to login. Once the user is logged in File Explorer is started, loading the graphical user interface of Windows NT. Windows NT is written in C and C++ , with

2318-511: The bus level. These CPUs may have access to a central shared memory (SMP or UMA ), or may participate in a memory hierarchy with both local and shared memory (SM)( NUMA ). The IBM p690 Regatta is an example of a high end SMP system. Intel Xeon processors dominated the multiprocessor market for business PCs and were the only major x86 option until the release of AMD 's Opteron range of processors in 2004. Both ranges of processors had their own onboard cache but provided access to shared memory;

2379-451: The cluster. Power consumption is also a consideration. Tightly coupled systems tend to be much more energy-efficient than clusters. This is because a considerable reduction in power consumption can be realized by designing components to work together from the beginning in tightly coupled systems, whereas loosely coupled systems use components that were not necessarily intended specifically for use in such systems. Loosely coupled systems have

2440-452: The collaboration ultimately fell apart. IBM continued OS/2 development alone while Microsoft continued work on the newly renamed Windows NT. Though neither operating system would immediately be as popular as Microsoft's MS-DOS or Windows products, Windows NT would eventually be far more successful than OS/2. Microsoft hired a group of developers from Digital Equipment Corporation led by Dave Cutler to build Windows NT, and many elements of

2501-450: The command line and skip the GUI installer. It has been suggested that Dave Cutler intended the initialism "WNT" as a play on VMS , incrementing each letter by one . However, the project was originally intended as a follow-on to OS/2 and was referred to as "NT OS/2" before receiving the Windows brand. One of the original NT developers, Mark Lucovsky , states that the name was taken from

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2562-660: The company's planned introduction of UltraSPARC models in 1995, but neither version was sold to the public as a retail product. Only two of the Windows NT 4.0 variants (IA-32 and Alpha) have a full set of service packs available. All of the other ports done by third parties (Motorola, Intergraph, etc.) have few, if any, publicly available updates. Windows NT 4.0 was the last major release to support Alpha, MIPS, or PowerPC, though development of Windows 2000 for Alpha continued until August 1999, when Compaq stopped support for Windows NT on that architecture; and then three days later Microsoft also canceled their AlphaNT program, even though

2623-425: The complex DCE or such components as DCE/RPC at the time. Microsoft's Component Object Model is based heavily on MSRPC, adding interfaces and inheritance. The marshalling semantics of DCE/RPC are used to serialize method calls and results between processes with separate address spaces, albeit COM did not initially allow network calls between different machines. With Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM), COM

2684-401: The design reflect earlier DEC experience with Cutler's VMS , VAXELN and RSX-11 , but also an unreleased object-based operating system developed by Cutler at Digital codenamed MICA . The team was joined by selected members of the disbanded OS/2 team, including Moshe Dunie . Although NT was not an exact clone of Cutler's previous operating systems, DEC engineers almost immediately noticed

2745-521: The executive. Routines from each are directly accessible, as for example from kernel-mode device drivers. API sets in the Windows NT family are implemented as subsystems atop the publicly undocumented "native" API ; this allowed the late adoption of the Windows API (into the Win32 subsystem). Windows NT was one of the earliest operating systems to use UCS-2 and UTF-16 internally. Windows NT uses

2806-741: The first keyboard to use a dedicated microcontroller, both attributes that would later be copied years later by Apple and IBM. In multiprocessing, the processors can be used to execute a single sequence of instructions in multiple contexts ( single instruction, multiple data or SIMD, often used in vector processing ), multiple sequences of instructions in a single context ( multiple instruction, single data or MISD, used for redundancy in fail-safe systems and sometimes applied to describe pipelined processors or hyper-threading ), or multiple sequences of instructions in multiple contexts ( multiple instruction, multiple data or MIMD). Tightly coupled multiprocessor systems contain multiple CPUs that are connected at

2867-544: The internal similarities. Parts of VAX/VMS Internals and Data Structures , published by Digital Press , accurately describe Windows NT internals using VMS terms. Furthermore, parts of the NT codebase's directory structure and filenames matched that of the MICA codebase. Instead of a lawsuit, Microsoft agreed to pay DEC $ 65–100 million, help market VMS, train Digital personnel on Windows NT, and continue Windows NT support for

2928-432: The latest version of Windows based on Windows NT being Windows 11 in 2021. The name "Windows NT" originally denoted the major technological advancements that it had introduced to the Windows product line, including eliminating the 16-bit memory access limitations of earlier Windows releases such as Windows 3.1 and the Windows 9x series. Each Windows release built on this technology is considered to be based on, if not

2989-571: The names of releases from Windows 2000 and later, though Microsoft described that product as being "Built on NT Technology". "NT" was a trademark of Northern Telecom (later Nortel ), which Microsoft was forced to acknowledge on the product packaging. One of the main purposes of NT is hardware and software portability. Various versions of NT family operating systems have been released for a variety of processor architectures, initially IA-32 , MIPS , and DEC Alpha , with PowerPC , Itanium , x86-64 and ARM supported in later releases. An initial idea

3050-414: The original target processor—the Intel i860 , code-named N10 ("N-Ten"). A 1991 video featuring Bill Gates and Microsoft products specifically says that "Windows NT stands for 'New Technology'". Seven year later in 1998, during a question-and-answer (Q&A) session, he then revealed that the letters were previously expanded to such but no longer carry any specific meaning. The letters were dropped from

3111-441: The processors may share "some or all of the system’s memory and I/O facilities"; it also gave tightly coupled system as a synonymous term. At the operating system level, multiprocessing is sometimes used to refer to the execution of multiple concurrent processes in a system, with each process running on a separate CPU or core, as opposed to a single process at any one instant. When used with this definition, multiprocessing

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3172-739: The symmetry (or lack thereof) in a given system. For example, hardware or software considerations may require that only one particular CPU respond to all hardware interrupts, whereas all other work in the system may be distributed equally among CPUs; or execution of kernel-mode code may be restricted to only one particular CPU, whereas user-mode code may be executed in any combination of processors. Multiprocessing systems are often easier to design if such restrictions are imposed, but they tend to be less efficient than systems in which all CPUs are utilized. Systems that treat all CPUs equally are called symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) systems. In systems where all CPUs are not equal, system resources may be divided in

3233-502: The system is booted, the Z-80 is the master and the Xenix boot process initializes the slave 68000, and then transfers control to the 68000, whereupon the CPUs change roles and the Z-80 becomes a slave processor responsible for all I/O operations including disk, communications, printer and network, as well as the keyboard and integrated monitor, while the operating system and applications run on

3294-420: The term "multiprocessor" normally refers to tightly coupled systems in which all processors share memory, multiprocessors are not the entire class of MIMD machines, which also contains message passing multicomputer systems. In a multiprocessing system, all CPUs may be equal, or some may be reserved for special purposes. A combination of hardware and operating system software design considerations determine

3355-423: Was cancelling plans to ship 64-bit Windows for Alpha. Because of this, Alpha versions of Windows NT are 32-bit only. While Windows 2000 only supports Intel IA-32 (32-bit), Windows XP, Server 2003, Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2 each have one edition dedicated to Itanium-based systems. In comparison with Itanium, Microsoft adopted x64 on a greater scale: every version of Windows since Windows XP (which has

3416-459: Was designed as a modified microkernel , as the Windows NT kernel was influenced by the Mach microkernel developed by Richard Rashid at Carnegie Mellon University, but does not meet all of the criteria of a pure microkernel. Both the kernel and the executive are linked together into the single loaded module ntoskrnl.exe ; from outside this module, there is little distinction between the kernel and

3477-638: Was extended to software components distributed across several networked computers. DCOM, which originally was called "Network OLE", extends Microsoft's COM, and provides the communication substrate under Microsoft's COM+ application server infrastructure. Windows NT 24H2 (10.0.26100.2454) (November 21, 2024 ; 2 days ago  ( 2024-11-21 ) ) [±] 23H2 (10.0.22635.4515) (November 22, 2024 ; 1 day ago  ( 2024-11-22 ) ) [±] 24H2 (10.0.26120.2415) (November 22, 2024 ; 1 day ago  ( 2024-11-22 ) ) [±] Windows NT

3538-523: Was initially developed using non-x86 development systems and then ported to the x86 architecture. This work was initially based on the Intel i860 -based Dazzle system and, later, the MIPS R4000-based Jazz platform. Both systems were designed internally at Microsoft. Windows NT 3.1 was released for Intel x86 PC compatible and PC-98 platforms, and for DEC Alpha and ARC -compliant MIPS platforms. Windows NT 3.51 added support for

3599-419: Was redesigned to match that of the brand-new Windows 95 , moving from the Program Manager to the Windows shell design. NTFS , a journaled, secure file system, is a major feature of NT. Windows NT also allows for other installable file systems; NT can also be installed on FAT file systems, and versions 3.1, 3.5, and 3.51 could be installed HPFS file systems. Windows NT introduced its own driver model,

3660-502: Was released, including the new shell from Windows 95 . Eventually, Microsoft incorporated the Windows NT technology into the Windows product line for personal computing and deprecated the Windows 9x family. Starting with Windows 2000 , "NT" was removed from the product name yet is still in several low-level places in the system — including for a while as part of the product version. Versions of Windows NT are installed using Windows Setup , which, starting with Windows Vista , uses

3721-443: Was to have a common code base with a custom Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) for each platform. However, support for MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC was later dropped in Windows 2000 . Broad software compatibility was initially achieved with support for several API "personalities", including Windows API , POSIX , and OS/2 APIs – the latter two were phased out starting with Windows XP. Partial MS-DOS and Windows 16-bit compatibility

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