Multics Operating system Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Multics Operating system - Essay Example Significantly, more than just the design and aesthetic feature of a certain operating system is the critical role that security in operating systems is playing in ensuring that important data are stored securely. It also serves as an interceptor to potential threats in the Internet. Thus, this treatise will elaborate on the security features of Multics and its relative contributions to the world. Further, in this exposition, we will also explore the history, impacts and the influences of Multics to our modern times and how these interactions resulted in a progressive stint that the world has taken. Multiplexed Information and Computing Service, or most commonly known as Multics, is a "comprehensive, general-purpose programming system which is being developed as a research project" (Corbato & Vyssotsky, 1965). The first Multics system was applied on the GE-645 computer. According to Corbato and Vyssotsky (1965), the prime goal of designing the system was to provide a computing system which has the capability to meet the entire current and future requirements of a large computer utility. In other words, this system must be able to function continuously and reliably even with large amount of data. It was Professor Fernando Corbato from Massachusetts Institute of Technology who spearheaded the development of the system together with his colleagues in 1964. Initially, it was a joint project by MIT led by Professor Corbato, the General Electric and the Bell Laboratories; however, Bell Labs decided to back out leaving GE and Multics behind until it was later conquered by Honeywell. Following Honeywell’s acquisition of GE’s computer business, the prime Multics production machine was Honeywell 6180 mainframe which was widely recognized following 1969. Multics network implementation likewise became one of the pioneering sites after its forerunner, the ARPANET. Two MIT production machines were linked to ARPANET, the MIT 645 and the MIT 6180, which were assoc iated to ARPANET in 1971 and 1973 respectively. The development of Multics gave rise to the development of some other operating systems such as the UNIX. The operating system UNIX was created after Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie employed ideas used to develop Multics. UNIX was finally completed in 1969. But since UNIX was developed using the C language, it became widely popular with colleges and universities worldwide because of its simplicity. In November 1992, the source code of the concluding Multics version, the MR 12.5, was released to the public through MIT. This particular version comprised "5839 files of PL/I code in 337 archives" (Gedda, 2009). The authorization is relatively lenient and gives anybody the "right to use, copy, modify and distribute the code and its documentation for any purpose and without fee" (Gedda, 2009). However, while anyone can be given access and right over the archives, a copyright notice and historical background must be provided to appear in all copies according to Gedda (2009). Multics had manifold elements aimed to bring about great accessibility in order to provide massive support for computing utility comparable to that of telephone and electric services. By adjoining more of the applicable resource such as memory and computing power, the entire system could substantially expand in size. Multics has numerous unique features which distinguish it from the rest. These features were