If GEC Plessey’s decision to use the 88000 RISC is a fillip for Motorola Inc, the choice of operating environment is the biggest payday yet for a start-up French company, Chorus Systemes SA. The C++ code on the System X New Enhanced Architecture is to run under the Unix-derived Chorus portable, distributed real-time operating system, so that the new System X will conform to the System V Interface Definition. Highlighted here last September (CI No 1,267), Chorus Systemes was founded in 1986 by Hubert Zimmermann, regarded in France as the father of the Open Systems Interconnection seven-layer model. With backing from France Telecom and Inria, the French state research laboratory, Chorus spent the first two years of its life refining the operating system, a by-product of the Cyclades project, by adding real-time and distributed processing capabilities. By last summer, Chorus still had only 30 employees, but was talking in terms of taking 10% of a much-expanded Unix market by 1993, with large telecommunications companies and operators its prime target.
