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66-534: In addition to operating systems , the PDP-15 has compilers for Fortran and ALGOL . The 18-bit PDP systems preceding the PDP-15 were named PDP-1, PDP-4 , PDP-7 and PDP-9 . The last PDP-15 was produced in 1979. The PDP-15 was DEC's only 18-bit machine constructed from TTL integrated circuits rather than discrete transistors, and, like every DEC 18-bit system could be equipped with: The PDP-15 models offered by DEC were: DECsys , RSX-15 , and XVM/RSX were

132-428: A system call to perform a block I/O write operation, then the system call might execute the following instructions: While the writing takes place, the operating system will context switch to other processes as normal. When the device finishes writing, the device will interrupt the currently running process by asserting an interrupt request . The device will also place an integer onto the data bus. Upon accepting

198-645: A computer even if they are not compatible with the base operating system. A library operating system (libOS) is one in which the services that a typical operating system provides, such as networking, are provided in the form of libraries and composed with a single application and configuration code to construct a unikernel : a specialized (only the absolute necessary pieces of code are extracted from libraries and bound together ), single address space , machine image that can be deployed to cloud or embedded environments. The operating system code and application code are not executed in separated protection domains (there

264-585: A development of MULTICS for a single user. Because UNIX's source code was available, it became the basis of other, incompatible operating systems, of which the most successful were AT&T 's System V and the University of California 's Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). To increase compatibility, the IEEE released the POSIX standard for operating system application programming interfaces (APIs), which

330-421: A few moments came up with better than a dozen candidate acronyms and names. My purpose was to come up with a good acronym and then find some appropriate words to justify it. For example, X always appealed to me as part of an acronym because it is pronounced so forcefully, inferring (at least to me) some power and drama. I used a lot of X's. These potential acronyms were submitted back to the legal department. At

396-484: A large legal settlement was paid. In the twenty-first century, Windows continues to be popular on personal computers but has less market share of servers. UNIX operating systems, especially Linux, are the most popular on enterprise systems and servers but are also used on mobile devices and many other computer systems. On mobile devices, Symbian OS was dominant at first, being usurped by BlackBerry OS (introduced 2002) and iOS for iPhones (from 2007). Later on,

462-442: A library with no protection between applications, such as eCos . A hypervisor is an operating system that runs a virtual machine . The virtual machine is unaware that it is an application and operates as if it had its own hardware. Virtual machines can be paused, saved, and resumed, making them useful for operating systems research, development, and debugging. They also enhance portability by enabling applications to be run on

528-447: A malformed machine instruction . However, the most common error conditions are division by zero and accessing an invalid memory address . Users can send messages to the kernel to modify the behavior of a currently running process. For example, in the command-line environment , pressing the interrupt character (usually Control-C ) might terminate the currently running process. To generate software interrupts for x86 CPUs,

594-455: A particular application's memory is stored, or even whether or not it has been allocated yet. In modern operating systems, memory which is accessed less frequently can be temporarily stored on a disk or other media to make that space available for use by other programs. This is called swapping , as an area of memory can be used by multiple programs, and what that memory area contains can be swapped or exchanged on demand. Virtual memory provides

660-529: A port of RSX-15 to the PDP-11 , although it later diverged significantly in terms of design and functionality. Commenting on the RSX acronym, Brevik says: "At first I called the new system DEX-15. It was an acronym for 'Digital's Executive - for the PDP-15.' The homonymic relation between DEC, DEX and deques (used as the primary linkage mechanism in the kernel) appealed to my sense of whimsy. People readily adopted

726-503: A program does not interfere with memory already in use by another program. Since programs time share, each program must have independent access to memory. Cooperative memory management, used by many early operating systems, assumes that all programs make voluntary use of the kernel 's memory manager, and do not exceed their allocated memory. This system of memory management is almost never seen any more, since programs often contain bugs which can cause them to exceed their allocated memory. If

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792-408: A program fails, it may cause memory used by one or more other programs to be affected or overwritten. Malicious programs or viruses may purposefully alter another program's memory, or may affect the operation of the operating system itself. With cooperative memory management, it takes only one misbehaved program to crash the system. Memory protection enables the kernel to limit a process' access to

858-440: A program tries to access memory that is not accessible memory, but nonetheless has been allocated to it, the kernel is interrupted (see § Memory management ) . This kind of interrupt is typically a page fault . When the kernel detects a page fault it generally adjusts the virtual memory range of the program which triggered it, granting it access to the memory requested. This gives the kernel discretionary power over where

924-470: A significant amount of CPU time. Direct memory access (DMA) is an architecture feature to allow devices to bypass the CPU and access main memory directly. (Separate from the architecture, a device may perform direct memory access to and from main memory either directly or via a bus.) When a computer user types a key on the keyboard, typically the character appears immediately on the screen. Likewise, when

990-402: A specific moment in time. Hard real-time systems require exact timing and are common in manufacturing , avionics , military, and other similar uses. With soft real-time systems, the occasional missed event is acceptable; this category often includes audio or multimedia systems, as well as smartphones. In order for hard real-time systems be sufficiently exact in their timing, often they are just

1056-526: A time could transfer data. The most-common 12-bit (Omnibus) controller was known as the RK8E ; it supported up to four RK05 drives. The RK05 disk had more than 4096 sectors and so could not be addressed completely by a single PDP-8 12-bit word. To accommodate this, the OS/8 operating system split each drive into two logical volumes, for example, RKA0 and RKB0 , representing the outermost and innermost cylinders of

1122-417: A user moves a mouse , the cursor immediately moves across the screen. Each keystroke and mouse movement generates an interrupt called Interrupt-driven I/O . An interrupt-driven I/O occurs when a process causes an interrupt for every character or word transmitted. Devices such as hard disk drives , solid-state drives , and magnetic tape drives can transfer data at a rate high enough that interrupting

1188-453: A variation of the classic reader/writer problem . The writer receives a pipe from the shell for its output to be sent to the reader's input stream. The command-line syntax is alpha | bravo . alpha will write to the pipe when its computation is ready and then sleep in the wait queue. bravo will then be moved to the ready queue and soon will read from its input stream. The kernel will generate software interrupts to coordinate

1254-418: Is interrupted by it. Operating systems are found on many devices that contain a computer – from cellular phones and video game consoles to web servers and supercomputers . In the personal computer market, as of September 2024 , Microsoft Windows holds a dominant market share of around 73%. macOS by Apple Inc. is in second place (15%), Linux is in third place (5%), and ChromeOS

1320-562: Is remote direct memory access , which enables each CPU to access memory belonging to other CPUs. Multicomputer operating systems often support remote procedure calls where a CPU can call a procedure on another CPU, or distributed shared memory , in which the operating system uses virtualization to generate shared memory that does not physically exist. A distributed system is a group of distinct, networked computers—each of which might have their own operating system and file system. Unlike multicomputers, they may be dispersed anywhere in

1386-484: Is a change away from the currently running process. Similarly, both hardware and software interrupts execute an interrupt service routine . Software interrupts may be normally occurring events. It is expected that a time slice will occur, so the kernel will have to perform a context switch . A computer program may set a timer to go off after a few seconds in case too much data causes an algorithm to take too long. Software interrupts may be error conditions, such as

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1452-422: Is difficult to define, but has been called "the layer of software that manages a computer's resources for its users and their applications ". Operating systems include the software that is always running, called a kernel —but can include other software as well. The two other types of programs that can run on a computer are system programs —which are associated with the operating system, but may not be part of

1518-896: Is in fourth place (2%). In the mobile sector (including smartphones and tablets ), as of September 2023 , Android's share is 68.92%, followed by Apple's iOS and iPadOS with 30.42%, and other operating systems with .66%. Linux distributions are dominant in the server and supercomputing sectors. Other specialized classes of operating systems (special-purpose operating systems), such as embedded and real-time systems, exist for many applications. Security-focused operating systems also exist. Some operating systems have low system requirements (e.g. light-weight Linux distribution ). Others may have higher system requirements. Some operating systems require installation or may come pre-installed with purchased computers ( OEM -installation), whereas others may run directly from media (i.e. live CD ) or flash memory (i.e. USB stick). An operating system

1584-443: Is only a single application running, at least conceptually, so there is no need to prevent interference between applications) and OS services are accessed via simple library calls (potentially inlining them based on compiler thresholds), without the usual overhead of context switches , in a way similarly to embedded and real-time OSes. Note that this overhead is not negligible: to the direct cost of mode switching it's necessary to add

1650-499: Is supported by most UNIX systems. MINIX was a stripped-down version of UNIX, developed in 1987 for educational uses, that inspired the commercially available, free software Linux . Since 2008, MINIX is used in controllers of most Intel microchips , while Linux is widespread in data centers and Android smartphones. The invention of large scale integration enabled the production of personal computers (initially called microcomputers ) from around 1980. For around five years,

1716-473: Is that they do not load user-installed software. Consequently, they do not need protection between different applications, enabling simpler designs. Very small operating systems might run in less than 10 kilobytes , and the smallest are for smart cards . Examples include Embedded Linux , QNX , VxWorks , and the extra-small systems RIOT and TinyOS . A real-time operating system is an operating system that guarantees to process events or data by or at

1782-435: Is the part of the operating system that provides protection between different applications and users. This protection is key to improving reliability by keeping errors isolated to one program, as well as security by limiting the power of malicious software and protecting private data, and ensuring that one program cannot monopolize the computer's resources. Most operating systems have two modes of operation: in user mode ,

1848-542: The CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers) was the most popular operating system for microcomputers. Later, IBM bought the DOS (Disk Operating System) from Microsoft . After modifications requested by IBM, the resulting system was called MS-DOS (MicroSoft Disk Operating System) and was widely used on IBM microcomputers. Later versions increased their sophistication, in part by borrowing features from UNIX. Apple 's Macintosh

1914-504: The INT assembly language instruction is available. The syntax is INT X , where X is the offset number (in hexadecimal format) to the interrupt vector table . To generate software interrupts in Unix-like operating systems, the kill(pid,signum) system call will send a signal to another process. pid is the process identifier of the receiving process. signum is

1980-520: The PDP-8 , the drive stored 1.6 megawords (so roughly the same bit capacity, albeit formatted differently). Multiple drives were daisy chained from their controller using Unibus cabling; a terminator was installed in the farthest drive. The 16-bit (Unibus) controller was known as the RK11 ; it allowed the connection of up to eight RK05 drives. Seeks could be overlapped among the drives but only one drive at

2046-407: The operating systems supplied by DEC for the PDP-15. A batch processing monitor (BOSS-15: Batch Operating Software System) was also available. The first DEC-supplied mass-storage operating system available for the PDP-15 was DECsys, an interactive single-user system. This software was provided on a DECtape reel, of which copies were made for each user. This copied DECtape was then added to by

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2112-420: The transistor in the mid-1950s, mainframes began to be built. These still needed professional operators who manually do what a modern operating system would do, such as scheduling programs to run, but mainframes still had rudimentary operating systems such as Fortran Monitor System (FMS) and IBSYS . In the 1960s, IBM introduced the first series of intercompatible computers ( System/360 ). All of them ran

2178-453: The 14-inch cartridge could not fit in a shirt pocket, unlike DECtape , the RK05 provided personal, portable, and expandable storage. Although a minimal PDP-8/A came with only one drive, most computers were configured with at least one additional storage device; some systems had four drives. Occupying 10.5 inches (6 U ) of space in a standard 19-inch rack , the drive was competitive at

2244-410: The CPU for every byte or word transferred, and having the CPU transfer the byte or word between the device and memory, would require too much CPU time. Data is, instead, transferred between the device and memory independently of the CPU by hardware such as a channel or a direct memory access controller; an interrupt is delivered only when all the data is transferred. If a computer program executes

2310-474: The CPU to re-enter supervisor mode , placing the kernel in charge. This is called a segmentation violation or Seg-V for short, and since it is both difficult to assign a meaningful result to such an operation, and because it is usually a sign of a misbehaving program, the kernel generally resorts to terminating the offending program, and reports the error. Windows versions 3.1 through ME had some level of memory protection, but programs could easily circumvent

2376-453: The acronym without question. But in a short time I was asked to submit the choice to the corporate legal department for a trademark search and registration. They sent me a memo that DEX was already trademarked by some paper company and I would have to rename the product. I pointed out to them that software and paper mills didn't seem to have a hell of a lot of connection, but they wouldn't budge. So I sat down with pencil and paper, and in

2442-538: The application program, which then interacts with the user and with hardware devices. However, in some systems an application can request that the operating system execute another application within the same process, either as a subroutine or in a separate thread, e.g., the LINK and ATTACH facilities of OS/360 and successors . An interrupt (also known as an abort , exception , fault , signal , or trap ) provides an efficient way for most operating systems to react to

2508-468: The board and erased all the rest until the only writing left was RSX. It even looked right. I have absolutely no memory about the other candidate acronyms. They are lost forever, I suppose. Well, maybe there's just a chance that the legal department kept copies of the correspondence - after all they are lawyers and they seem to hold on to everything (especially my money). Oh, by the way, the acronym stood for 'Real-Time System Executive.' Years later that

2574-453: The computer's memory. Various methods of memory protection exist, including memory segmentation and paging . All methods require some level of hardware support (such as the 80286 MMU), which does not exist in all computers. In both segmentation and paging, certain protected mode registers specify to the CPU what memory address it should allow a running program to access. Attempts to access other addresses trigger an interrupt, which causes

2640-471: The details of how interrupt service routines behave vary from operating system to operating system. However, several interrupt functions are common. The architecture and operating system must: A software interrupt is a message to a process that an event has occurred. This contrasts with a hardware interrupt — which is a message to the central processing unit (CPU) that an event has occurred. Software interrupts are similar to hardware interrupts — there

2706-480: The drive. Prior to the introduction of DEC's own drives, DEC resold two drives from Diablo Data Systems (later acquired by Xerox ), the 1.22 megabyte RK02, of which very few were shipped, and the 2.45 megabyte RK03 (Diablo Model 31). These were interface compatible with the RK05; RK03 and RK05 disks could be interchanged as well. The RK04 was DEC's counterpart to the RK02, for low-density storage of 600 Kwords, and

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2772-422: The environment. Interrupts cause the central processing unit (CPU) to have a control flow change away from the currently running program to an interrupt handler , also known as an interrupt service routine (ISR). An interrupt service routine may cause the central processing unit (CPU) to have a context switch . The details of how a computer processes an interrupt vary from architecture to architecture, and

2838-410: The hardware checks that the software is only executing legal instructions, whereas the kernel has unrestricted powers and is not subject to these checks. The kernel also manages memory for other processes and controls access to input/output devices. The operating system provides an interface between an application program and the computer hardware, so that an application program can interact with

2904-493: The hardware only by obeying rules and procedures programmed into the operating system. The operating system is also a set of services which simplify development and execution of application programs. Executing an application program typically involves the creation of a process by the operating system kernel , which assigns memory space and other resources, establishes a priority for the process in multi-tasking systems, loads program binary code into memory, and initiates execution of

2970-418: The indirect pollution of important processor structures (like CPU caches , the instruction pipeline , and so on) which affects both user-mode and kernel-mode performance. The first computers in the late 1940s and 1950s were directly programmed either with plugboards or with machine code inputted on media such as punch cards , without programming languages or operating systems. After the introduction of

3036-404: The interrupt request, the operating system will: When the writing process has its time slice expired, the operating system will: With the program counter now reset, the interrupted process will resume its time slice. Among other things, a multiprogramming operating system kernel must be responsible for managing all system memory which is currently in use by the programs. This ensures that

3102-431: The kernel—and applications—all other software. There are three main purposes that an operating system fulfills: With multiprocessors multiple CPUs share memory. A multicomputer or cluster computer has multiple CPUs, each of which has its own memory . Multicomputers were developed because large multiprocessors are difficult to engineer and prohibitively expensive; they are universal in cloud computing because of

3168-701: The latter only held 1 megabyte. An RK04 drive, which has half the capacity of an RK05, was also offered. Systems on which it can be used include DEC's PDP-8 , PDP-11 , and PDP-15 . The RK05 was a moving head magnetic disk drive manufactured by DEC . It stored approximately 2.5 MB on a 14", single-platter IBM-2315 -style front-loading removable disk cartridge. The cartridge permitted users to have relatively unlimited off-line storage and to have very fast access to such data. The PDP systems to which it could be attached had numerous operating systems for each computer architecture, so by changing disk pack another operating system could also be booted. Although

3234-400: The memory allocated to a different one. Around the same time, teleprinters began to be used as terminals so multiple users could access the computer simultaneously. The operating system MULTICS was intended to allow hundreds of users to access a large computer. Despite its limited adoption, it can be considered the precursor to cloud computing . The UNIX operating system originated as

3300-408: The need to use it. A general protection fault would be produced, indicating a segmentation violation had occurred; however, the system would often crash anyway. The use of virtual memory addressing (such as paging or segmentation) means that the kernel can choose what memory each program may use at any given time, allowing the operating system to use the same memory locations for multiple tasks. If

3366-408: The open-source Android operating system (introduced 2008), with a Linux kernel and a C library ( Bionic ) partially based on BSD code, became most popular. The components of an operating system are designed to ensure that various parts of a computer function cohesively. With the de facto obsoletion of DOS , all user software must interact with the operating system to access hardware. The kernel

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3432-421: The piping. Signals may be classified into 7 categories. The categories are: Input/output (I/O) devices are slower than the CPU. Therefore, it would slow down the computer if the CPU had to wait for each I/O to finish. Instead, a computer may implement interrupts for I/O completion, avoiding the need for polling or busy waiting. Some computers require an interrupt for each character or word, costing

3498-402: The programmer or the user with the perception that there is a much larger amount of RAM in the computer than is really there. RK05 Digital Equipment Corporation 's RK05 is a disk drive whose removable disk pack can hold about 2.5 megabytes of data. Introduced 1972, it is similar to IBM 's 1964-introduced 2310 , and uses a disk pack similar to IBM's 2315 disk pack, although

3564-418: The same operating system— OS/360 —which consisted of millions of lines of assembly language that had thousands of bugs . The OS/360 also was the first popular operating system to support multiprogramming , such that the CPU could be put to use on one job while another was waiting on input/output (I/O). Holding multiple jobs in memory necessitated memory partitioning and safeguards against one job accessing

3630-400: The signal number (in mnemonic format) to be sent. (The abrasive name of kill was chosen because early implementations only terminated the process.) In Unix-like operating systems, signals inform processes of the occurrence of asynchronous events. To communicate asynchronously, interrupts are required. One reason a process needs to asynchronously communicate to another process solves

3696-400: The size of the machine needed. The different CPUs often need to send and receive messages to each other; to ensure good performance, the operating systems for these machines need to minimize this copying of packets . Newer systems are often multiqueue —separating groups of users into separate queues —to reduce the need for packet copying and support more concurrent users. Another technique

3762-449: The sound, trying to get the feel of each one. After ten minutes or so we had narrowed down the selection to three. Bob sat back in silence as I kept looking at each acronym, seeing how it flowed off my tongue, what impression it gave me, and most importantly, the overall feeling about it. After three or four minutes a strong feeling came over me about one of them. It really felt right. I looked at Bob and announced, "It's RSX". I went to

3828-442: The system and may also include accounting software for cost allocation of processor time , mass storage , peripherals, and other resources. For hardware functions such as input and output and memory allocation , the operating system acts as an intermediary between programs and the computer hardware, although the application code is usually executed directly by the hardware and frequently makes system calls to an OS function or

3894-411: The time I had no favorite. In a week or so they came back with a subset of my list that they could accept as trademarks. It was left to me to make the final choice. Bob Decker and I met in my office one afternoon to discuss the choice. Bob was a marketeer who worked for me. I chalked all the candidates on the blackboard and we started going through them one by one, pronouncing each out loud, savoring

3960-437: The time. The cartridge contained a single, 14" aluminum platter coated with iron oxide in an epoxy binder. The two ferrite and ceramic read/write heads were pressed towards the disk by spring arms, floating on an air bearing maintained by the rotation of the disk. They were positioned by a voice coil actuator using a linear optical encoder for feedback. The track density was 100 tracks-per-inch. The bit density along

4026-406: The track was about 2200 bits-per-inch. Discrete electronics computed the velocity profile for seeks commanded by the controller. An absolute filter ( HEPA filter ) provided pressurized air to the cartridge, excluding most contaminants that would otherwise cause head crashes . When used on 16-bit systems such as the PDP-11 , the drive stored roughly 1.2 megawords. When used on 12-bit systems such as

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4092-570: The user, and thus was storage for personal programs and data. A second DECtape was used as a scratch tape by the assembler and the Fortran compiler. RSX-15 was released by DEC in 1971. The main architect for RSX-15 (later renamed XVM/RSX) was Dennis "Dan" Brevik. Once XVM/RSX was released, DEC facilitated that "a PDP-15 can be field-upgraded to XVM" but it required "the addition of the XM15 memory processor." The RSX-11 operating system began as

4158-473: The world. Middleware , an additional software layer between the operating system and applications, is often used to improve consistency. Although it functions similarly to an operating system, it is not a true operating system. Embedded operating systems are designed to be used in embedded computer systems , whether they are internet of things objects or not connected to a network. Embedded systems include many household appliances. The distinguishing factor

4224-529: Was changed to 'Resource Sharing Executive,' which I think is even better. ...And that is how RSX got its name, on the 3rd floor of building 5 in the old mill." Later versions of the PDP-15 could run a real-time multi-user OS called XVM/RSX , an outgrowth of RSX-15. The XVM upgrade to RSX was multi-user, and enabled up to six concurrent teletype-based users. XVM Support for the PDP-15/76 included using an RK05 disk drive. The MUMPS operating system, which

4290-515: Was originally developed in 1966, was developed on the PDP-7 outside DEC. It is also available for the PDP-15. DEC provided mathematical, scientific and commercial software application tools. Operating system An operating system ( OS ) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common services for computer programs . Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of

4356-406: Was the first popular computer to use a graphical user interface (GUI). The GUI proved much more user friendly than the text-only command-line interface earlier operating systems had used. Following the success of Macintosh, MS-DOS was updated with a GUI overlay called Windows . Windows later was rewritten as a stand-alone operating system, borrowing so many features from another ( VAX VMS ) that

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