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What (who) is MULTICS - definition

OPERATING SYSTEM

MULTICS; Multics operating system; Multiplexed Information and Computing Service; Multex; Multics-like

Multics

<operating system> /muhl'tiks/ MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service. A time-sharing operating system co-designed by a consortium including MIT, GE and {Bell Laboratories} as a successor to MIT's CTSS. The system design was presented in a special session of the 1965 Fall Joint Computer Conference and was planned to be operational in two years. It was finally made available in 1969, and took several more years to achieve respectable performance and stability. Multics was very innovative for its time - among other things, it was the first major OS to run on a {symmetric multiprocessor}; provided a hierarchical file system with access control on individual files; mapped files into a paged, segmented virtual memory; was written in a high-level language (PL/I); and provided dynamic inter-procedure linkage and memory (file) sharing as the default mode of operation. Multics was the only general-purpose system to be awarded a B2 security rating by the NSA. Bell Labs left the development effort in 1969. Honeywell commercialised Multics in 1972 after buying out GE's computer group, but it was never very successful: at its peak in the 1980s, there were between 75 and 100 Multics sites, each a multi-million dollar mainframe. One of the former Multics developers from Bell Labs was {Ken Thompson}, a circumstance which led directly to the birth of Unix. For this and other reasons, aspects of the Multics design remain a topic of occasional debate among hackers. See also brain-damaged and GCOS. MIT ended its development association with Multics in 1977. Honeywell sold its computer business to Bull in the mid 1980s, and development on Multics was stopped in 1988 when Bull scrapped a Boston proposal to port Multics to a platform derived from the DPS-6. A few Multics sites are still in use as late as 1996. The last Multics system running, the Canadian Department of National Defence Multics site in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, shut down on 2000-10-30 at 17:08 UTC. The Jargon file 3.0.0 claims that on some versions of Multics one was required to enter a password to log out but James J. Lippard <lippard@primenet.com>, who was a Multics developer in Phoenix, believes this to be an urban legend. He never heard of a version of Multics which required a password to logout. Tom Van Vleck <thvv@multicians.org> agrees. He suggests that some user may have implemented a 'terminal locking' program that required a password before one could type anything, including logout. http://multicians.org/. Usenet newsgroup: news:alt.os.multics. [Jargon File] (2002-04-12)

MULTICS

MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service (Reference: OS)

Multics Relational Data Store

RELATIONAL DATABASE FOR THE MULTICS OPERATING SYSTEM

<database> (MRDS) The first commercial relational database, implemented as part of Multics by Jim Weeldreyer and Oris Friesen of Honeywell Phoenix in about 1977. MRDS included a report writer called LINUS written by Jim Falksen. (1997-01-29)

Wikipedia

Multics

Multics ("Multiplexed Information and Computing Service") is an influential early time-sharing operating system based on the concept of a single-level memory. Nathan Gregory writes that Multics "has influenced all modern operating systems since, from microcomputers to mainframes."

Initial planning and development for Multics started in 1964, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Originally it was a cooperative project led by MIT (Project MAC with Fernando Corbató) along with General Electric and Bell Labs. It was developed on the GE 645 computer, which was specially designed for it; the first one was delivered to MIT in January 1967. GE offered their earlier 635 systems with an early timesharing system known as "Mark I" and intended to offer the 645 with Multics as a larger successor. Bell withdrew from the project in 1969 as it became clear it would not deliver a working system in the short term. Shortly thereafter, GE decided to exit the computer industry entirely and sold the division to Honeywell in 1970. Honeywell offered Multics commercially, but with limited success.

Multics has numerous features intended to ensure high availability so that it would support a computing utility similar to the telephone and electricity utilities. Modular hardware structure and software architecture are used to achieve this. The system can grow in size by simply adding more of the appropriate resource, be it computing power, main memory, or disk storage. Separate access control lists on every file provide flexible information sharing, but complete privacy when needed. Multics has 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.

Due to its many novel and valuable ideas, Multics has had a significant influence on computer science despite its faults. Its most lasting effect on the computer industry was to inspire the creation of Unix, which carried forward many Multics features, but was able to run on less-expensive hardware. Unix was developed at Bell to allow their Multics team to continue their research using smaller machines, first a PDP-7 and ultimately the PDP-11.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics