IBM AIX (operating system)
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"AIX" redirects here. For other uses, see AIX (disambiguation).
AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive) is the name given to a series of proprietary operating systems sold by IBM for several of its computer system platforms, based on UNIX System V with 4.3BSD-compatible command and programming interface extensions. The AIX 5L 5.3 release runs on up to 64 IBM POWER or PowerPC architecture central processing units and two terabytes (TB) of random access memory. The JFS2 file system - first introduced by IBM as part of AIX - allows computer files and partitions over 16 TB in size (though that's the tested limit and recommended maximum).
HistoryAIX Version 1, introduced in 1986 for the IBM 6150 RT workstation, was based on UNIX System V Releases 1 and 2. In developing AIX, IBM and INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation (whom IBM contracted) also incorporated source code from 4.2 and 4.3BSD UNIX. Among other variants, IBM later produced AIX Version 3 (also known as AIX/6000), based on System V Release 3, for their IBM POWER-based RS/6000 platform. Since 1990, AIX has served as the primary operating system for the RS/6000 series (now called System p by IBM). AIX Version 4, introduced in 1994, added symmetric multiprocessing with the introduction of the first RS/6000 SMP servers. AIX Version 4 continued to evolve though the 1990s culminating with AIX 4.3.3 in 1999. In the late 1990s, under Project Monterey, IBM and the Santa Cruz Operation planned to integrate AIX and UnixWare into a single 32-bit/64-bit multiplatform UNIX with particular emphasis on running on Intel IA-64 architecture CPUs. This never came to fruition, though a beta test version of AIX 5L for IA-64 systems was released. AIX 6 was announced in May 2007 and ran an open beta from June 2007 until the general availability (GA) of AIX 6.1 on November 9th, 2007. Major new features in AIX 6.1 are full RBAC, Workload Partitions (WPAR) enabling application mobility, and Live Partition Mobility on the new POWER6 hardware. SCO lawsuit
In the SCO v. IBM lawsuit filed in 2003, the SCO Group alleged that (among other infractions) IBM misappropriated licensed source code from UNIX System V Release 4 for incorporation into AIX; SCO subsequently withdrew IBM's license to develop and distribute AIX. IBM maintains that their license was irrevocable, and continues to sell and support the product pending the outcome of litigation. On the 10th August, 2007 a U.S. district court judge ruled that SCO does not own the copyrights to the Unix operating system. The court ruled that Novell could now force SCO to waive its lawsuit against IBM. Further, the court ruled that SCO must pay Novell most of the license revenue that SCO secured from Sun Microsystems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. for their use of Unix technologies. Many people feel that this ruling is the death-knell in SCO's legal fight. Supported hardware platformsIBM 6150 RTThe original AIX (sometimes called AIX/RT) was developed for the IBM 6150 RT workstation by IBM in conjunction with INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation, who had previously ported UNIX System III to the IBM PC for IBM as PC/IX. Installation media consisted of eight 1.2M floppy disks. The RT was based on the ROMP chip, the first commercial RISC chip, based on a design, the IBM 801, pioneered at IBM Research. One of the novel aspects of the RT design was the use of a microkernel, called Virtual Resource Manager (VRM). The keyboard, mouse, display, disk drives and network were all controlled by a microkernel, which allowed multiple operating systems to be booted and run at the same time. One could "hotkey" from one operating system to the next using the Alt-Tab key combination. Each OS in turn would get possession of the keyboard, mouse and display. Besides AIX v2, the PICK OS also utilized this microkernel. Much of the AIX v2 kernel was written in the PL/I programming language, which proved troublesome during the migration to AIX v3. AIX v2 included full TCP/IP networking, as well as SNA, and two networking file systems: NFS, licensed from Sun Microsystems, and Distributed Services or DS. DS had the distinction of being built on top of SNA, and thereby being fully compatible with DS on the IBM midrange AS/400 and mainframe systems. For the graphical user interfaces, AIX v2 came with the X10R3 and later the X10R4 and X11 versions of the X Window System from MIT, together with the Athena widget set. Compilers for Fortran and C were available. One of the more popular desktop applications was the PageMaker desktop publishing software. IBM PS/2 seriesAIX PS/2 (also known as AIX/386) was developed by Locus Computing Corporation under contract to IBM. AIX PS/2, first released in 1989, ran on IBM PS/2 personal computers with Intel 386 or later processors. IBM mainframesIn 1988, IBM announced AIX/370, also developed by Locus Computing. AIX/370 was IBM's first attempt to offer Unix-like functionality for their mainframe line, specifically the System/370. AIX/370 was released in 1990 with functional equivalence to System V Release 2 and 4.3BSD as well as IBM enhancements. With the introduction of the ESA/390 architecture, AIX/370 was replaced by AIX/ESA in 1991, which was based on OSF/1, and also ran on the System/390 platform. This development effort was made partly to allow IBM to compete with Amdahl UTS. Unlike AIX/370, AIX/ESA ran both natively as the host operating system, and as a guest under VM. AIX/ESA, while technically advanced, had little commercial success, partially because UNIX functionality was added as an option to the existing mainframe operating system, MVS, which became MVS/ESA OpenEdition in 1999. POWER/PowerPC-based systemsThe release of AIX version 3 (sometimes called AIX/6000) coincided with the announcement of the first IBM RS/6000 models. The RS/6000 was unique in that it not only outperformed all other machines in integer compute performance, but also beat the competition by a factor of 10 in floating-point performance.[citation needed] Releases of AIX version 3 also took advantage of the developments in the POWER architecture. AIX v3 innovated in several ways on the software side. It was the first operating system to introduce the idea of a journalling file system, JFS, which allowed for fast boot times by avoiding the need to fsck the disks on every reboot. Another innovation was the introduction of shared libraries, which avoided the need for an application to statically link to the libraries it used. The resulting smaller binaries used less of the hardware RAM, to run, and used less of the disk space to install. Besides improving performance, it was a boon to developers: executable binaries could be in the 10s of kilobytes instead of a megabyte for an executable statically linked to the C library. AIX v3 also ditched the microkernel of AIX v2, a contentious move that resulted in v3 being somewhat more "pure" (and containing no PL/1 code) than v2. Other notable subsytems included:
As of 2007, the current release of AIX runs on the RS/6000 and System p, BladeCenter JS-series, IntelliStation POWER, and System i5 platforms. Apple Network ServersThe Apple Network Server systems were PowerPC-based systems designed by Apple Computer to have numerous high-end features that standard Apple hardware did not have, including swappable hard drives, redundant power supplies, and external monitoring capability. These systems were more or less based on the Power Macintosh hardware available at the time but were designed to use AIX (versions 4.1.4 or 4.1.5) as their native operating system in a specialized version specific to the ANS. AIX was only compatible with the Network Servers and was not ported to standard Power Macintosh hardware. Not to be confused is A/UX, Apple's earlier version of Unix for 68k-based Macintoshes. IA-64 systemsAs part of Project Monterey, a beta test version of AIX 5L was released for the IA-64 (Itanium) architecture in 2001, but this was abandoned before it became an official product. VersionsPOWER/PowerPC releases
IBM PS/2 releases
IBM 6150 RT releases
User interfacesGraphicalThe Common Desktop Environment (CDE) is AIX's default graphical user interface. As part of Linux Affinity and the free AIX Toolbox for Linux Applications (ATLA), open-source KDE and GNOME desktop are also available. System Management ConsoleSMIT is the System Management Interface Tool for AIX. It allows a user to navigate a menu hierarchy of commands, rather than using the command line. Invocation is typically achieved with the command SMIT also generates a log of commands that are performed in the
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