17 Dec
2022
17 Dec
'22
4:26 a.m.
To what extent were the Unix folks at Bell Labs
already familiar with DEC systems before the PDP-7?
Some awareness, but no hands-on experience,
was any thought given to trying to get a 360 system?
Very serious thought. However, virtual memory was a non-negotiable
desideratum, to which Gene Amdahl was implacably opposed because
demand paging would devastate hardware performance. Soon after GE got
the nod, IBM revealed Gerrit Blaauw's skunk-works project, the 360/67,
but by then the die had been cast. Michigan bought one and built a
nice time-sharing system that was running well before Multics.
Doug