Developer | Eindhoven University of Technology (Technische Hogeschool Eindhoven); Edsger Dijkstra, et al. |
---|---|
Written in | Electrologica X8 assembly language |
Working state | Discontinued |
Initial release | 1965 |
Final release | Final / 1968 |
Marketing target | Research |
Available in | English |
Update method | Compile from source code |
Platforms | Electrologica X8 |
Kernel type | Layered |
Default user interface | Paper tape |
The THE multiprogramming system or THE OS was a computer operating system designed by a team led by Edsger W. Dijkstra, described in monographs in 1965-66 [1] and published in 1968. [2] Dijkstra never named the system; "THE" is simply the abbreviation of "Technische Hogeschool Eindhoven", then the name (in Dutch) of the Eindhoven University of Technology of the Netherlands. The THE system was primarily a batch system [3] that supported multitasking; it was not designed as a multi-user operating system. It was much like the SDS 940, but "the set of processes in the THE system was static". [3]
The THE system apparently introduced the first forms of software-based paged virtual memory (the Electrologica X8 did not support hardware-based memory management), [3] freeing programs from being forced to use physical locations on the drum memory. It did this by using a modified ALGOL compiler (the only programming language supported by Dijkstra's system) to "automatically generate calls to system routines, which made sure the requested information was in memory, swapping if necessary". [3] Paged virtual memory was also used for buffering input/output (I/O) device data, and for a significant portion of the operating system code, and nearly all the ALGOL 60 compiler. In this system, semaphores were used as a programming construct for the first time.
The design of the THE multiprogramming system is significant for its use of a layered structure, in which "higher" layers depend on "lower" layers only:
The constraint that higher layers can only depend on lower layers was imposed by the designers in order to make reasoning about the system (using quasi-formal methods) more tractable, and also to facilitate building and testing the system incrementally. The layers were implemented in order, layer 0 first, with thorough testing of the abstractions provided by each layer in turn. This division of the kernel into layers was similar in some ways to Multics' later ring-segmentation model. Several subsequent operating systems have used layering to some extent, including Windows NT and macOS, although usually with fewer layers.
The code of the system was written in assembly language for the Dutch Electrologica X8 computer. This computer had a word size of 27 bits, 48 kilowords of core memory, [3] 512 kilowords of drum memory providing backing store for the LRU cache algorithm, paper tape readers, paper tape punches, plotters, and printers.
ALGOL is a family of imperative computer programming languages originally developed in 1958. ALGOL heavily influenced many other languages and was the standard method for algorithm description used by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in textbooks and academic sources for more than thirty years.
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra was a Dutch computer scientist, programmer, software engineer, and science essayist.
In computer science, a semaphore is a variable or abstract data type used to control access to a common resource by multiple threads and avoid critical section problems in a concurrent system such as a multitasking operating system. Semaphores are a type of synchronization primitive. A trivial semaphore is a plain variable that is changed depending on programmer-defined conditions.
The Burroughs Large Systems Group produced a family of large 48-bit mainframes using stack machine instruction sets with dense syllables. The first machine in the family was the B5000 in 1961, which was optimized for compiling ALGOL 60 programs extremely well, using single-pass compilers. The B5000 evolved into the B5500 and the B5700. Subsequent major redesigns include the B6500/B6700 line and its successors, as well as the separate B8500 line.
In computer science, the sleeping barber problem is a classic inter-process communication and synchronization problem that illustrates the complexities that arise when there are multiple operating system processes.
The Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica is a research centre in the field of mathematics and theoretical computer science. It is part of the institutes organization of the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and is located at the Amsterdam Science Park. This institute is famous as the creation site of the programming language Python. It was a founding member of the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM).
Regnecentralen (RC) was the first Danish computer company, founded on October 12, 1955. Through the 1950s and 1960s, they designed a series of computers, originally for their own use, and later to be sold commercially. Descendants of these systems sold well into the 1980s. They also developed a series of high-speed paper tape machines, and produced Data General Nova machines under license.
ALGOL 60 is a member of the ALGOL family of computer programming languages. It followed on from ALGOL 58 which had introduced code blocks and the begin
and end
pairs for delimiting them, representing a key advance in the rise of structured programming. ALGOL 60 was one of the first languages implementing function definitions. ALGOL 60 function definitions could be nested within one another, with lexical scope. It gave rise to many other languages, including CPL, PL/I, Simula, BCPL, B, Pascal, and C. Practically every computer of the era had a systems programming language based on ALGOL 60 concepts.
Per Brinch Hansen was a Danish-American computer scientist known for his work in operating systems, concurrent programming and parallel and distributed computing.
KDF9 was an early British 48-bit computer designed and built by English Electric. The first machine came into service in 1964 and the last of 29 machines was decommissioned in 1980 at the National Physical Laboratory. The KDF9 was designed for, and used almost entirely in, the mathematical and scientific processing fields – in 1967, nine were in use in UK universities and technical colleges. The KDF8, developed in parallel, was aimed at commercial processing workloads.
The RC 4000 Multiprogramming System is a discontinued operating system developed for the RC 4000 minicomputer in 1969. For clarity, this article mostly uses the term Monitor.
The Electrologica X1 was a digital computer designed and manufactured in the Netherlands from 1958 to 1965. About thirty were produced and sold in the Netherlands and abroad.
The Electrologica X8 was a digital computer designed as a successor to the Electrologica X1 and manufactured in the Netherlands by Electrologica NV between 1964 and 1968.
In computing, the producer-consumer problem is a family of problems described by Edsger W. Dijkstra since 1965.
Arie Nicolaas Habermann, often known as Nico Habermann, was a noted Dutch computer scientist.
A process is a program in execution, and an integral part of any modern-day operating system (OS). The OS must allocate resources to processes, enable processes to share and exchange information, protect the resources of each process from other processes and enable synchronization among processes. To meet these requirements, the OS must maintain a data structure for each process, which describes the state and resource ownership of that process, and which enables the OS to exert control over each process.
The Atlas Computer was one of the world's first supercomputers, in use from 1962 to 1972. Atlas' capacity promoted the saying that when it went offline, half of the United Kingdom's computer capacity was lost. It is notable for being the first machine with virtual memory using paging techniques; this approach quickly spread, and is now ubiquitous.
The kernel is a computer program at the core of a computer's operating system and generally has complete control over everything in the system. The kernel is also responsible for preventing and mitigating conflicts between different processes It is the portion of the operating system code that is always resident in memory and facilitates interactions between hardware and software components. A full kernel controls all hardware resources via device drivers, arbitrates conflicts between processes concerning such resources, and optimizes the utilization of common resources e.g. CPU & cache usage, file systems, and network sockets. On most systems, the kernel is one of the first programs loaded on startup. It handles the rest of startup as well as memory, peripherals, and input/output (I/O) requests from software, translating them into data-processing instructions for the central processing unit.
Carel S. Scholten was a physicist and a pioneer of computing.
Jacob Anton "Jaap" Zonneveld was a Dutch programmer who, with Edsger W. Dijkstra, wrote the first Algol 60 compiler.