Tru64 UNIX

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Tru64 UNIX

Tru64 UNIX is a 64-bit

64-bit

64-bit CPUs have existed in supercomputers since the 1960s and in RISC-based computer workstation and Server s since the early 1990s. In 2003 they were introduced to the mainstream personal computer arena, in the form of the x86-64 and 64-bit PowerPC processor architectures....
UNIX

Unix

Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
operating system

Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
for the Alpha

DEC Alpha

Hewlett-Packard

The Hewlett-Packard Company , commonly referred to as HP, is a technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States....
(HP). Previously, Tru64 UNIX was a product of Compaq

Compaq

Compaq Computer Corporation was an United States personal computer company founded in 1982, and is now a brand name of Hewlett-Packard Company....
, and before that, Digital Equipment Corporation

Digital Equipment Corporation

Digital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering United States company in the computer industry. It is often referred to within the computing industry as DEC ....
(DEC), where it was known as Digital UNIX (formerly DEC OSF/1 AXP).

As its original name suggests, Tru64 UNIX is based on the OSF/1 operating system. DEC's previous UNIX product was known as Ultrix

Ultrix

Ultrix was the brand name of Digital Equipment Corporation's native Unix systems. While ultrix is the Latin word for avenger, the name was chosen solely for its sound....
and was based on BSD UNIX.

It is unusual among common commercial UNIX implementations, as it is built on top of the Mach kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University is a top private university research university in Pittsburgh. Since its inception, Carnegie Mellon has grown into a world-renowned institution, with numerous programs that are frequently college and university rankings among the best in the world....
.

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Encyclopedia

Tru64 UNIX is a 64-bit

64-bit

Unix

Operating system

DEC Alpha

Hewlett-Packard

Compaq

Compaq Computer Corporation was an United States personal computer company founded in 1982, and is now a brand name of Hewlett-Packard Company....
, and before that, Digital Equipment Corporation

Digital Equipment Corporation

Ultrix

Carnegie Mellon University

NEXTSTEP

Nextstep was the original Object-oriented operating system, computer multitasking operating system that NeXT developed to run on its range of proprietary computers, such as the NeXTcube....
, MkLinux

MkLinux

MkLinux is an open source computer operating system started by the Open Software Foundation Research Institute and Apple Computer in February 1996 to port Linux to the PowerPC platform, and Macintosh computers....
, and Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a line of computer operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc., and since 2002 has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems....
.)

Tru64 UNIX requires the SRM

System Reference Manual

The SRM firmware is the boot firmware written by Digital Equipment Corporation for computer systems based on the Alpha AXP microprocessor. The acronym SRM is derived from the phrase Alpha System Reference Manual, the publication detailing the Alpha AXP architecture and which specified various features of the SRM firmware....
boot firmware

Firmware

Firmware is a term sometimes used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs that internally control various electronic devices. Typical examples range from end user products such as remote controls or calculators, via computer parts and devices like harddisks, keyboard s, TFT screens or memory cards, all the way to scientific instr...
found on Alpha-based computer systems.

OSF/1

In 1988, during the so-called "Unix wars

Unix wars

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 thenceforth....
", DEC joined with IBM

IBM

International Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue" , is a multinational corporation computer technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, New York, United States....
, Hewlett-Packard

Hewlett-Packard

The Hewlett-Packard Company , commonly referred to as HP, is a technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States....
, and others to form the Open Software Foundation

Open Software Foundation

The Open Software Foundation was an organization founded in 1988 to create an open standard for an implementation of the Unix operating system....
(OSF) to develop a version of Unix. Dubbed OSF/1, the aim was to compete with System V Release 4

UNIX System V

Unix System V, commonly abbreviated SysV , is one of the versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983....
from AT&T

AT&T

AT&T Inc. is the largest US provider of both local and long distance telephone services, and Digital subscriber line Internet access. AT&T is the second largest provider of wireless service in the United States, with over 77 million wireless customers, and more than 150 million total customers....
and Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. is a multinational corporation vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services, founded on February 24, 1982....
, and it has been argued that a primary goal was for the operating system to be free of AT&T intellectual property. The fact that OSF/1 was one of the first operating systems to use the Mach kernel is cited as support of this assertion. Digital also strongly promoted OSF/1 for real-time

Real-time computing

In computer science, real-time computing is the study of Computer hardware and computer software systems that are subject to a "real-time constraint"?i.e., operational deadlines from event to system response....
applications , and with traditional UNIX implementations at the time providing poor real-time support at best, the real-time and multi-threading

Thread (computer science)

In computer science, a thread of execution is a Fork of a computer program into two or more Concurrency running task s. The implementation of threads and process es differs from one operating system to another, but in most cases, a thread is contained inside a process....
support was heavily dependent on the Mach kernel. It also incorporated a large part of the BSD kernel (based on the 4.3-Reno release) to provide Unix compatibility. OSF/1 was envisaged to be the third major branch of the Unix family tree, after System V and BSD

Berkeley Software Distribution

Berkeley Software Distribution is the Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995....
.

DEC's original release of OSF/1 (DEC OSF/1 V1.0) was in January 1992 for their line of MIPS

MIPS architecture

MIPS is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by MIPS Technologies . In the mid to late 1990s, it was estimated that one in three RISC microprocessors produced were MIPS implementations....
-based DECstation

DECstation

The DECstation was a brand of computers used by Digital Equipment Corporation, and refers to three distinct lines of computer systems—the first released in 1978 as a word processing system, and the latter two both released in 1989....
workstations, however this was never a fully supported product and was cancelled before the end of the year. DEC ported OSF/1 to their new Alpha AXP

DEC Alpha

Alpha, originally known as Alpha AXP, was a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation , designed to replace the 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computer ISA and its implementations....
platform (as DEC OSF/1 AXP), and this was the first version (V1.2) of what is most commonly referred to as OSF/1. DEC OSF/1 AXP 1.2 was shipped on March 1993. OSF/1 AXP was a full 64-bit operating system and the native UNIX implementation for the Alpha architecture. From OSF/1 AXP V2.0 onwards, UNIX System V

UNIX System V

Unix System V, commonly abbreviated SysV , is one of the versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983....
compatibility was also integrated into the system.

Other vendors

HP also worked on a product based on OSF/1, designed for early versions of their PA-RISC workstations, but this project failed due to the complex nature of the hardware.

Apple Computer

Apple Computer

Apple Inc., formerly Apple Computer Inc., is an United States multinational corporation which designs and manufactures consumer electronics and software products....
intended to base A/UX

A/UX

A/UX was Apple Computer's implementation of the Unix operating system for some of their Apple Macintosh computers. The later versions of A/UX ran on the Macintosh II, Macintosh Quadra and Macintosh Centris series of machines as well as the Macintosh SE/30....
4.0 for their PowerPC

PowerPC

PowerPC is a RISC instruction set architecture created by the 1991 Apple Inc.?IBM?Motorola alliance, known as AIM alliance. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded system and high-performance processors....
-based Macintoshes on OSF/1, but the project was cancelled.

IBM used OSF/1 as the basis of the AIX/ESA operating system for System/370

System/370

The IBM System/370 was a model range of IBM mainframes announced on June 30, 1970 as the successors to the System/360 family. The series maintained backward compatibility with the S/360, allowing an easy migration path for customers; this, plus improved performance, were the dominant themes of the product announcement....
and System/390 mainframes.

OSF/1 was also ported by Kendall Square Research

Kendall Square Research

Kendall Square Research was a supercomputer company headquartered originally in Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1986, near Massachusetts Institute of Technology....
to their proprietary processor architecture used in the KSR1 supercomputer

Supercomputer

A supercomputer is a computer that is at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation. Supercomputers introduced in the 1960s were designed primarily by Seymour Cray at Control Data Corporation , and led the market into the 1970s until Cray left to form his own company, Cray Research....
.

In 1994, after AT&T had sold UNIX System V to Novell

Novell

Novell Inc. is a global software corporation based in the United States specializing in enterprise operating systems such as SUSE Linux distributions and Novell NetWare; identity, security and systems management solutions; and collaboration solutions....
and the rival Unix International

Unix International

Unix International or UI was an association created in 1988 to promote open standards, especially the Unix operating system. Its most notable members were AT&T and Sun Microsystems, and in fact the commonly accepted reason for its existence was as a counterbalance to the Open Software Foundation , itself created in response to AT&T's a...
consortium had disbanded, the Open Software Foundation ceased funding of research and development of OSF/1.

OSF/1 AD

OSF/1 AD (Advanced Development) was a distributed version of OSF/1 developed for massively parallel

Massively parallel

Massively parallel is a description which appears in computer science, life science, medical diagnostics, and other fields.A massively parallel computer is a distributed memory computer system which consists of many individual nodes, each of which is essentially an independent computer in itself, and in turn consists of at least one...
supercomputers by Locus Computing Corporation

Locus Computing Corporation

Locus Computing Corporation was formed in 1982 by Gerald J. Popekto commercialize the technologies developed for the LOCUS distributed computing operating system at UCLA....
. Variants of OSF/1 AD were used on several such systems, including the Intel Paragon

Intel Paragon

The Intel Paragon was a series of massively parallel supercomputers produced by Intel. The Paragon XP/S was a productized version of the experimental Touchstone Delta system built at Caltech, launched in 1992....
XP/S and ASCI Red

ASCI Red

ASCI Red or ASCI Option Red, was a supercomputer installed at Sandia National Laboratories, located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. ASCI Red became operational in 1997 and was retired from service in September, 2005....
, Convex

Convex Computer

Convex Computer was a company that produced a number of Vector processor minisupercomputers, supercomputers for small-to-medium-sized businesses....
Exemplar SPP-1200 (as SPP-UX) and the Hitachi

Hitachi, Ltd.

is a multinational corporation specializing in high-technology and services headquartered in Marunouchi Itchome, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. The company is the parent of the Hitachi Group as part of the larger DKB Group companies....
SR2201 (as HI-UX MPP).

Digital UNIX

In 1995, starting with release 3.2, DEC renamed DEC OSF/1 AXP to Digital UNIX to reflect its conformance with the X/Open

X/Open

X/Open Company, Ltd. was a consortium founded by several European UNIX systems manufacturers in 1984 to identify and promote open standards in the field of information technology....
Single UNIX Specification

Single UNIX Specification

The Single UNIX Specification is the collective name of a family of standards for computer operating systems to qualify for the name "Unix". The SUS is developed and maintained by the Austin Group, based on earlier work by the IEEE and The Open Group....
.

Tru64 UNIX

After Compaq's purchase of DEC in early 1998, with the release of version 4.0F, Digital UNIX was renamed to Tru64 UNIX to emphasise its 64-bit-clean nature and de-emphasise the Digital brand.

In April 1999, Compaq announced that Tru64 UNIX 5.0 successfully ran on Intel's IA-64

Itanium

Itanium is the brand name for 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture . Intel has released two processor families using the brand: the original Itanium and the Itanium 2....
simulator. However, this port was cancelled a few months later.

Current status

With their purchase of Compaq in 2002, HP announced their intention to migrate many of Tru64 UNIX's more innovative features (including its AdvFS

AdvFS

AdvFS, also known as Tru64 Unix Advanced File System, is a file system developed in the late 1980s to mid 1990s by Digital Equipment Corporation for their OSF/1 version of the Unix operating system ....
file system, Trucluster

TruCluster

TruCluster is a closed-source high-availability clustering solution for the Tru64 UNIX operating system. It was originally developed by Digital Equipment Corporation , but was transferred to Compaq in 1998 when Digital was acquired by the company, which then later merged with Hewlett-Packard ....
, and LSM) to HP-UX

HP-UX

HP-UX 11i is Hewlett-Packard's proprietary software implementation of the Unix operating system, based on UNIX System V . It runs on the HP 9000 PA-RISC-based range of central processing unit and HP Integrity Intel's Itanium-based systems, and was also available for later Apollo/Domain systems....
, HP's existing Unix OS. In December 2004, HP announced a change of plan; they would instead use the Veritas file system

VERITAS File System

The VERITAS File System, , is an extent -based file system. It was originally developed by VERITAS Software. Through an Original equipment manufacturer agreement, VxFS is used as the primary filesystem of the HP-UX operating system, although HP-UX calls it JFS....
and abandon the Tru64 advanced features. In the process, many of the remaining Tru64 developers were laid off

Layoff

Layoff is the temporary suspension or permanent termination of employment of an employee or a group of employees for business reasons, such as the decision that certain positions are no longer necessary or a business slow-down or interruption in work....
.

In July 2007, HP stated that they would continue to support Tru64 UNIX until at least 2012. The next maintenance release, 5.1B-5 is planned for the first quarter of 2009.

In 2008, HP has contributed the AdvFS

AdvFS

Open source

Open source is an approach to design, development, and distribution offering practical accessibility to a product's source . Some consider open source as one of various possible design approaches, while others consider it a critical Strategy element of their business operations....
community.

External links

- HP's official Tru64 UNIX site
- Industry news, events, links, etc. related to HP's Tru64 UNIX operating system running on .
from
from
[news://comp.unix.tru64 comp.unix.tru64] - Newsgroup
Newsgroup

A newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages Posting style from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group....
on running, owning and administering Tru64 UNIX (web-accessible via )
[news://comp.unix.osf.osf1 comp.unix.osf.osf1] - Newsgroup on running, owning and administering OSF/1 (web-accessible via )