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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>Multics</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../M.html" title="M"/><link rel="previous" href="muggle.html" title="muggle"/><link rel="next" href="multitask.html" title="multitask"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">Multics</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="muggle.html">Prev</a><EFBFBD></td><th width="60%" align="center">M</th><td width="20%" align="right"><EFBFBD><a accesskey="n" href="multitask.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="Multics"/><dt xmlns="" id="Multics"><b>Multics</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="pronunciation">/muhl<68>tiks/</span>, <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> [from “<span class="quote">MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service</span>”]
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An early timesharing <a href="../O/operating-system.html"><i class="glossterm">operating system</i></a> co-designed
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by a consortium including MIT, GE, and Bell Laboratories as a successor to
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<a href="../C/CTSS.html"><i class="glossterm">CTSS</i></a>. The design was first presented in 1965,
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planned for operation in 1967, first operational in 1969, and took several
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more years to achieve respectable performance and stability.</p><p>Multics was very innovative for its time — among other things,
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it provided a hierarchical file system with access control on individual
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files and introduced the idea of treating all devices uniformly as special
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files. It was also the first OS to run on a symmetric multiprocessor, and
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the only general-purpose system to be awarded a B2 security rating by the
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NSA (see <a href="../O/Orange-Book.html"><i class="glossterm">Orange Book</i></a>).</p><p>Bell Labs left the development effort in 1969 after judging that
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<a href="../S/second-system-effect.html"><i class="glossterm">second-system effect</i></a> had bloated Multics to the
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point of practical unusability. Honeywell commercialized Multics in 1972
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after buying out GE's computer group, but it was never very successful: at
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its peak in the 1980s, there were between 75 and 100 Multics sites, each a
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multi-million dollar mainframe.</p><p>One of the former Multics developers from Bell Labs was Ken Thompson,
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and <a href="../U/Unix.html"><i class="glossterm">Unix</i></a> deliberately carried through and extended
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many of Multics' design ideas; indeed, Thompson described the very name
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‘Unix’ as “<span class="quote">a weak pun on Multics</span>”. For this and
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other reasons, aspects of the Multics design remain a topic of occasional
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debate among hackers. See also <a href="../B/brain-damaged.html"><i class="glossterm">brain-damaged</i></a> and
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<a href="../G/GCOS.html"><i class="glossterm">GCOS</i></a>.</p><p>MIT ended its development association with Multics in 1977.
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Honeywell sold its computer business to Bull in the mid 80s, and
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development on Multics was stopped in 1988. Four Multics sites were known
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to be still in use as late as 1998, but the last one (a Canadian military
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site) was decommissioned in November 2000. There is a Multics page at
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<a href="http://www.stratus.com/pub/vos/multics/tvv/multics.html" target="_top">http://www.stratus.com/pub/vos/multics/tvv/multics.html</a>.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="muggle.html">Prev</a><EFBFBD></td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../M.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"><EFBFBD><a accesskey="n" href="multitask.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">muggle<EFBFBD></td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"><EFBFBD>multitask</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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