Interest growing in UNIX

Press, 26 April 1988, Page 39

Interest growing in UNIX

Bv

GARETH POWELL

Asi has ibeen before,' UNIX is nbt the guard |in a Turkish seraglio, i It is an operating system which many) see as a very viable alternative - to OS./2. Initially, it seemed unlikely that it would ever become workable' with personal computers simply because of (size — up to! 20 megabytes of a hard disk — complexity and general nastinfess. To call the original versions of UNIX userrvicious would be to unduly flatter them. I But condensed versions have become available, hard disk space gets cheaper by the day, the universities are releasing wave upon wave of UNIX proselytisers who' understand how the damn thing works- and the big companies are backing UNIX — in one of its many forms — in a big way. Indeed, you can isee the strength of UNIX.' by taking a close look' at the new IBM standard personal computing operating system OS/2 — developed in conjunction with Microsoft — which contains many UNIX-like features. This does not mean that UNIX has it all its own way but, as matters stand, it is one of the major contenders in the race to become the operating system of the future. One problem arising is that several different flavours of UNIX have been developed by ‘different vendors and they are not all, surprise, (surprise, totally compatible. There is a big drive to make the lEE (Institute pf Electronic Engineers) emerging UNIX standard. Posix. the exemplar for the industry. This is I strongly supported by the European Economic Commonity and IBM. Some vendors, not all. have accepted this but with the heavies on their side it does look as though Posix. will be a unifying standard. Hopefully. ( • Unisys is going into UNIX in a big way. It has a joint development going with American! telecommunications giant AT and T,. to improve (the commercial functionality — that is make it| less user vicious — of UNIX System V. At the same time it has signed lan agreement with Sun to use Sun’s SPARC i (scalable processor reduced instruction set aijchitecture. which is a mouthful but basically a way) of making

an ultra-fast chip) microprocessor design as the basis for future! high-per-formance UNIjX ( based computers. | j I - ® Due from Zenith is a new UNIX machine supporting up to 6-i terminal through multiple 80386 processors. Initially, the new Zenith box will run Xenix but this | will soon merge with UNIX System V. version 3. Thle machine will go into the same casing that housed the Zenith Z-248 machine, and, it is rumoured, will be Zenith’s entry’ in a big new contract now being bid by the Air Force and Navy. • GRiD Systems.! which has just been taken over by Tandy, has I a batterypowered, : Intel 80386 driven laptop capable of running UNIX and Xenix applications, i j Barry Margerum. GRiD vice-president of marketing, said: "This laptop is idea) for people who rely on the UNIX! operating system for its sophisticated features and associated applications, and who require greater flexibility as to where !thev use it." • Apollo, whichi is in competition withj Sun in making work | stations — upmarket I graphic oriented, super PCs which are now rivalling PCs in some levels — has introduced a new Domain/OS operating system which is what it calls the industry’s only "true distributed UNIX system.” This claim, no matter how you. define it. seems difficult to sustain. Domain' OS Offers both AT and T's UNIX System : V and Berkeley 4.3 UNIX plus Apollo’s own Aegis operating System. It also offers a migration path to the possibly emerging ' industry standard. Posix.' Talking of standards, there was a full and frank interchange of (views at the] recent Seybiold desktop publishing conference in {San Francisco. Scott McNealy of Sup. gave a promotional speech about the! AT and T/Sun UNIX agreement arid Sun’s architecture. 4 representative from rival Apollo called the standardisation of UNIX a “mjyth” and told McNealy that Sun is taking the approach of Henry Ford: "Yjou can buy any colour you want as idng as it’s blqck." i ( McNealy responded that Sun was not forcing anyone to its stand-

arris but clai Tied that unlike Apollo. ’ we offer our source code 5o anyone who wants it.” © Uni Data has released a relational database which will run under UNIX or .vet another flavour of the operating system. Xenix from Microsoft.. (Xenix is slated to become part of AT and T's UNIX later this year which will simplify mat ers somewhat.) @ Kodak, which is diversifying out of the picturetaking business in a big way. has required Interactive | Systems in California. This company is a major supplier of UNIX software and sells an integrated farrily of systems software.! ® In Canada. HCR is an UNIX-oriented software company! which is now distributing 386/ix. a full implements ion of the UNIX System V operating system for 80386-based personal ermputers. One option with 386/ix is a module called VP'ix, which alliws MS-DOS software :o run unchanged. Lt is claimed that this version will provide multitasking with DOS programs just as UNIX does with its own 386/ix was developed by the newly owned Ko lak company. Interactive. © In Fran.'e. UNIX has made an jippearance on

the Advanced Micro Devices 29000 microprocessor which is a RISC I (reduced instruction set) ! UNIX ship, which open- i ales at a brisk 25 mega Hertz and can process 25 million instructions per second. The introduction of UNIX to the chip has been carried out in cooperation with UNIX specialists, UniSoft. The port will be of the latest version of UNIX V, release 3. Thirty Fortune 500 companies have signed up already las test sites for this nevj AMD UNIX 29000 , microprocessor.

® ; IBM is pushing UNIX at almost all levels of its range of computers. It has announced that Aix. its very own version of UNIX — you did not for a moment imagine that they would use everyone else’s although.it is pretty much an equivalent to UNIX V. release 3 — will now work on the company’s most powerful computers. IBM says its VM operating system will support Aixl37o across the System/370 processor families from the 9370 to the 3090. And even the System/36/38 is almost certainly going to get Aix in the near future. Plainly, for IBM the Aix system will become the main vehicle for future product integration.