While the Advanced Computing Environment consortium battles for survival from its latest wound (CI No 1,745), at least the kernel-level development of its Unix operating system environment looks to be coming together, if rather slowly. According to Santa Cruz Operation Inc’s UK systems marketing manager, Mark Miller, the bulk of the development work done by Digital Equipment Corp on producing an OSF/1-Ultrix Unix implementation for the MIPS Computer Systems Inc RISC system, which is the basis of ACE’s Advanced RISC Computing system – as well as DEC’s own Unix workstation and server technology – is now being transferred to Santa Cruz. The cocktail of OSF/1, Ultrix, Santa Cruz’s Unix Labs System V.3.2-derived Xenix and a version of the Open Desktop bundle of Unix system software will be implemented to run on the MIPS RISC part – it’ll include some of MIPS’ RiscOS Unix operating system technology too – as well as on the Intel Corp iAPX-86 chip-set, which ACE has also endorsed. While DEC has completed much of the work on the MIPS version – and will continue its work on developing symmetric multi-processing extensions and other high-end features that it needs for its product line – the Intel implementation will take a little longer, according to Miller. DEC will not release a separate product from that which Santa Cruz eventually delivers to the ACE developers, according to Dominic LaCava, DEC’s vice-president of Unix software and services. If the front-end of the environment is in any kind of doubt, other third-party technologies are guaranteed to figure in the ACE Unix operating system, including High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire-based Insignia Solutions Ltd’s SoftPC MS-DOS under Unix emulation software which last month won Microsoft to its cause – and Locus Computing Corp’s PC Interface, already a component of Open Desktop. Work on the Intel kernel, networking and other system-level features of the ACE Unix operating system is being undertaken by Santa Cruz’s development team in the UK in Watford, Hertfordshire. This will be integrated with the Open Desktop – currently being put together by Santa Cruz in the US – when the interface element is sewn up. The completed environment which will be a Santa Cruz product, according to Miller, is to be licensed back to DEC and offered to the rest of the ACE collective.
