Ultrix (officially all-caps ULTRIX) was the brand name of Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) native Unix systems. While ultrix is the Latin word for avenger, the name was chosen solely for its sound. The term software company could be applied to; a) a company that produces software or b) a company that distributes software from a third party or c) a company that provides services for software. ... A software developer is a programmer who is concerned with one or more facets of the software development process, a somewhat broader scope of computer programming. ... Digital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering company in the American computer industry. ... Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD, sometimes called Berkeley Unix) is the Unix derivative distributed by the University of California, Berkeley, starting in the 1970s. ... Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ... A kernel connects the software and hardware of a computer. ... Digital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering company in the American computer industry. ... Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ...

History

The initial development of Unix occurred on DEC equipment, notably DEC PDP-7 and PDP-11 (Programmable Data Processor) systems. Later DEC computers, such as their VAX systems, were also popular platforms on which to run Unix; the first port to VAX, UNIX/32V, was finished in 1978 (the VAX was only released in October 1977). However DEC supplied their own proprietary operating system, VMS, for a long time before they acknowledged Unix. DEC PDP-7 Minicomputer(circa 1965) A modified PDP-7 under restoration in Oslo, Norway The DEC PDP-7 is a minicomputer produced by Digital Equipment Corporation. ... The PDP-11 was a 16-bit minicomputer sold by Digital Equipment Corp. ... This article is about the computing term VAX, not to be confused with the vacuum cleaner/floorcare manufacturer Vax. ... UNIX/32V was an early version of the Unix operating system from Bell Laboratories, released late in 1978. ... 1978 (MCMLXXVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday. ... For the album by Ash, see 1977 (album). ... OpenVMS (Open Virtual Memory System or just VMS) is the name of a high-end computer server operating system that runs on the VAX and Alpha family of computers developed by Digital Equipment Corporation of Maynard, Massachusetts (now owned by Hewlett-Packard), and more recently on Hewlett-Packard systems built...

Absolutely key to bringing Unix to inside the company, DEC's Unix Engineering Group (UEG) was started by Bill Munson with Jerry Brenner and Fred Canter, both from DEC's premier Customer Service Engineering group, Bill Shannon (from Case Western University), and Armando Stettner (from Bell Labs). Other later members of UEG included Joel Magid, Bill Doll, and Jim Barclay recruited from DEC's various marketing and product management groups.

The UEG team, under Canter's direction, released V7M, a modified version of Unix 7th Edition (q.v.). Seventh Edition Unix, also called Version 7 Unix, Version 7 or just V7, was an important early release of the Unix operating system. ...

BSD

Shannon and Stettner worked on low-level CPU and device driver support initially on UNIX/32V but quickly moved to concentrate on working with the University of California, Berkeley's 4BSD. Berkeley's Bill Joy came to New Hampshire to work with Shannon and Stettner to wrap up a new BSD release, incorporating the UEG CPU support and drivers, and to do some last minute development and testing on other configurations available at DEC's facilities. As an aside, the three brought up a final test version on the main VAX used by the VMS development group. No comments were heard from the VMS developers whose terminals greeted them the next morning with a Unix login prompt... UEG's machine was the first to run the new Unix, labeled 4.5BSD as was the tape Bill Joy took with him. The thinking was that 5BSD would be the next version - university lawyers thought it would be better to call it 4.1BSD. After the completion of 4.1BSD, Bill Joy left Berkeley to work at Sun Microsystems. Bill Shannon later moved from New Hampshire to join him. Armando Stettner stayed at DEC and later concieved of and started the Ultrix project. CPU redirects here. ... The University of California, Berkeley (also known as UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, and by other names, see below) is the oldest and flagship campus of the ten-campus University of California system. ... Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD, sometimes called Berkeley Unix) is the Unix derivative distributed by the University of California, Berkeley, starting in the 1970s. ... Bill Joy (left) with Paul Saffo. ... Sun Microsystems, Inc. ...

As an aside, DEC UEG's main VAX, named decvax, was also one of the central nodes in the UUCP and Usenet network. It was the first system to link, in real time for email and Usenet news article, the east and west coasts of the US, Duke University (duke) and UC Berkeley (ucbvax). Later, after some compression capability was added to netnews, decvax was linked with Europe (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) and then Australia (University of Melbourne), making calls at least twice per day each. UUCP stands for Unix to Unix CoPy. ... Usenet is a distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP network of the same name. ... Duke University is a private coeducational research university located in Durham, North Carolina, US. The school, which officially became Duke University in 1924, traces its institutional roots to 1838. ... The Vrije Universiteit is a university in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. ... The Old Quad Building, formerly Old Law The University of Melbourne, located in Melbourne, Victoria, is the second oldest university in Australia, and the oldest in Victoria. ...

Armando Stettner suggested to Bill Doll during a hallway conversation that it was time for DEC to make a native VAX Unix product available to its customers. A proposal was made to Bill Munson who later presented the idea to Ken Olsen. It was said that Olsen grabbed a Unix license plate, slapped it on someone's chest and said let's do it. Thus began Ultrix. Ken Olsen calling UNIX snake oil Kenneth H. Olsen (born on February 20, 1926) is an American engineer who cofounded Digital Equipment Corporation in 1957 with colleague Harlan Anderson. ... Live Free or Die, as seen in Edinburgh, Scotland. ...

First release of Ultrix

The first Ultrix OS, Ultrix-32, was based on 4.2BSD with some features from System V, and was released in 1984. Its purpose was to provide a DEC-supported native Unix for VAX. It also incorporated several modifications and scripts from Usenet/UUCP experience gained while running decvax. Later, Ultrix-32 incorporated support for DECnet and other proprietary DEC protocols such as LAT. It did not support VAXclustering. Shortly thereafter, DEC also offered a product based upon its V7M release. Given Western Electric/AT&T Unix licensing, DEC (and others) were restricted to selling binary-only licenses. A significant part of the engineering work was in making the systems relatively flexible and configurable despite their binary-only nature. After Ultrix completed its first phase of customer beta trials, Armando Stettner moved to the West Coast to help Steve Bourne start up DEC's Workstation Systems Engineering organization and then worked in a very small group from which spawned DEC's first RISC workstation product, the MIPS-based DECstation 3100, and later the Open Software Foundation It has been suggested that Traditional Unix be merged into this article or section. ... 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... DECnet is a proprietary suite of network protocols created by Digital Equipment Corporation, originally released in 1975 in order to connect two PDP-11 minicomputers. ... Linux Cluster at Purdue University. ... Western Electric (sometimes abbreviated WE and WECo) was a US electrical engineering company, the manufacturing arm of AT&T from 1881 to 1995 . ... A DECstation 5000/120 The DECstation was a brand of computers built by DEC, and refers to two distinct lines of computer systems—the first released in the 1970s as a word processing system, and the second (and more widely known) released in 1989 as computer workstations based on the... The Open Software Foundation (OSF) was an organization founded in 1988 to create an open standard for an implementation of the Unix operating system. ...

Later on, DEC provided native Unix operating systems on three platforms: PDP-11 minicomputers (where it was one of many available operating systems), VAX based computers (where it was one of two primary OS choices), and DEC's first line of RISC systems, the DECstation workstations and DECsystem servers (where it was the only OS choice offered). Note that the DECstation systems used MIPS processors, not the much later DEC Alpha. The PDP-11 was a 16-bit minicomputer sold by Digital Equipment Corp. ... This article is about the computing term VAX, not to be confused with the vacuum cleaner/floorcare manufacturer Vax. ... Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC), is a microprocessor CPU design philosophy that favors a smaller and simpler set of instructions that all take about the same amount of time to execute. ... A DECstation 5000/120 The DECstation was a brand of computers built by DEC, and refers to two distinct lines of computer systems—the first released in the 1970s as a word processing system, and the second (and more widely known) released in 1989 as computer workstations based on the... DECsystem was a line of servers from DEC. They were based on MIPS processors and ran DECs unix Ultrix. ... MIPS Technologies, formerly MIPS Computer Systems, is most widely known for developing the MIPS architecture, a series of pioneering RISC CPUs. ... DEC Alpha AXP 21064 Microprocessor The DEC Alpha, also known as the Alpha AXP, is a 64-bit RISC microprocessor originally developed and fabricated by Digital Equipment Corp (DEC). ...

The original versions were known as Ultrix-11 and Ultrix-32, but as the PDP-11 faded from view it became known simply as Ultrix, or to its detractors as Buglix or Scrofulix. When the MIPS versions of Ultrix was released, the VAX and MIPS versions were referred to as VAX/ULTRIX and RISC/ULTRIX respectively. Much engineering emphasis was placed on supportability and reliable operations including continued work on CPU and device driver support (which was, for the most part, also sent to UC Berkeley), hardware failure support and recovery with enhancement to error message text, documentation, and general work at both the kernel and systems program levels. Later Ultrix-32 incorporated some features from 4.3BSD and included DECnet in addition to the standard TCP/IP, and both the SMTP and DEC's Mail-11 protocols. DECnet is a proprietary suite of network protocols created by Digital Equipment Corporation, originally released in 1975 in order to connect two PDP-11 minicomputers. ... The Internet protocol suite is the set of communications protocols that implement the protocol stack on which the Internet runs. ... Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is the de facto standard for email transmission across the Internet. ... Mail-11 was the native email transport protocol used by Digital_Equipment_Corporations VMS operating system, and supported by several other DEC operating systems such as Ultrix. ...

Notably, Ultrix implemented the inter-process communication (IPC) facilities found in System V (named pipes, messages, semaphores, and shared memory). While the converged Unix from the Sun and AT&T alliance (that spawned the Open Software Foundation or OSF), released late 1986, put BSD features into System V, DEC took the best from System V and added it to a BSD base. The expression Inter-process communication (IPC) describes the exchange of data between one process and another, either within the same computer or over a network. ... In computing, a named pipe (also FIFO for its behaviour) is an extension to the traditional pipe concept on Unix and Unix-like systems, and is one of the methods of interprocess communication. ... In computer science, Message passing is used in concurrent programming, parallel programming, and object-oriented programming, to accomplish communication by sending messages to recipients. ... A semaphore is a protected variable (or abstract data type) and constitutes the classic method for restricting access to equivalent shared resources (e. ... In computer hardware, shared memory refers to a (typically) large block of random access memory that can be accessed by several different central processing units (CPUs) in a multiple-processor computer system. ... The Unix wars were the struggles between vendors of the Unix computer operating system in the late 1980s and early 1990s to set the standard for Unix henceforth. ... The Open Software Foundation (OSF) was an organization founded in 1988 to create an open standard for an implementation of the Unix operating system. ... 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Originally, on the VAX workstations, Ultrix-32 had a desktop environment called UWS, Ultrix Workstation Software, which was based on a version of the X Window System. Later, the widespread version 11 of the X Window System (X11) was added, using a look and feel called DECwindows that was devised in order to mimic the look and feel of the UWS system. Eventually DECwindows also provided the Motif look and feel. In graphical computing, a desktop environment (DE) offers graphical user interface (GUI) solution to operate a computer. ... KDE 3. ... KDE 3. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... Motif (or capitalized MOTIF) is a graphical widget toolkit for building graphical user interfaces under the X Window System on UNIX and other POSIX-compliant systems. ...

Ultrix ran on multiprocessor systems from both the VAX and DECsystem families. The kernel supported symmetric multiprocessing while not being fully multithreaded. As such, there was liberal use of locking and some tasks could only be done by a particular CPUs (e.g. the processing of interrupts). This was not uncommon in other SMP implementations of that time (e.g. SunOS). Sadly, Ultrix was slow to support many then new or emerging Unix system capabilities found on competing Unix systems (e.g. it never supported shared libraries or dynamically linked executables; delay in implementing bind, 4.3BSD system calls and libraries especially the math libraries; etc.) and suffered from some problems, most notably file system integrity issues (having never picked up the 4.3BSD filesystem and fixes). Multiprocessing is traditionally known as the use of multiple concurrent processes in a system as opposed to a single process at any one instant. ... A kernel connects the software and hardware of a computer. ... Symmetric Multiprocessing, or SMP, is a multiprocessor computer architecture where two or more identical processors are connected to a single shared main memory. ... Many programming languages, operating systems, and other software development environments support what are called threads of execution. ... In computing, an interrupt is an asynchronous signal from hardware or software indicating the need for attention. ... SunOS was the version of the UNIX operating system developed by Sun Microsystems for their workstations and server systems until the early 1990s. ... Illustration of an application which may use libvorbisfile. ...

Last release

As part of its commitment to the OSF, DEC replaced Ultrix as its Unix offering with OSF/1 for the Alpha, ending Unix development on the MIPS and VAX platforms. OSF/1 had previously shipped in a version for the MIPS architecture in 1991, but was not considered or advertised as a mature product. OSF/1 had a Mach-based kernel with many of the features missing from Ultrix. Again, the UEG (by now the Ultrix Engineering Group) worked at making the new OSF/1-based Digital Unix run well on DEC hardware, with the reliability and maintainability that people came to expect from DEC operating systems. DEC Alpha AXP 21064 Microprocessor The DEC Alpha, also known as the Alpha AXP, is a 64-bit RISC microprocessor originally developed and fabricated by Digital Equipment Corp (DEC). ... Mach is an operating system kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University to support operating system research, primarily distributed and parallel computation. ...

The last major release of Ultrix was version 4.5 in 1995, which supported all previously supported DECstations and VAXen. There were some subsequent Y2K patches. 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

See also

• Comparison of BSD operating systems

There are a number of Unix-like operating systems based on, or descended from, the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) series of UNIX variants. ...

External links

• Ultrix FAQ
• Info on Ultrix from OSdata (last updated April 10, 2002)