Unix software specialist ACE Associated Computer Experts BV of Amsterdam has won exclusive distribution rights for the Amoeba distributed operating system, developed at the Free University of Amsterdam under the leadership of operating systems guru Andrew Tanenbaum. Associated Computer has the worldwide rights for Amoeba, a distributed operating system able transparently to take advantege of parallel processing architectures that has been under development since 1980. According to Tanenbaum, the system has already generated a large number of requests for information worldwide from major companies – and when I visited Japan with ACE earlier this year, reactions were enthusiastic indeed. It has been used to implement the transmission of digital television images for the European Space Agency. Associated Computer’s managing director, Martin de Lange, has high hopes for the system. We expect distributed operating systems to play a major role in the computer market in the future, and Amoeba, just like Unix in 1976, is the obvious choice for ACE.
