Research and Advances

TENEX, a paged time sharing system for the PDP – 10

TENEX is a new time sharing system implemented on a DEC PDP-10 augmented by special paging hardware developed at BBN. This report specifies a set of goals which are important for any time sharing system. It describes how the TENEX design and implementation achieve these goals. These include specifications for a powerful multiprocess large memory virtual machine, intimate terminal interaction, comprehensive uniform file and I/O capabilities, and clean flexible system structure. Although the implementation described here required some compromise to achieve a system operational within six months of hardware checkout, TENEX has met its major goals and provided reliable service at several sites and through the ARPA network.

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Research and Advances

Structure of a LISP system using two-level storage

In an ideal list-processing system there would be enough core memory to contain all the data and programs. Described in this paper are a number of techniques that have been used to build a LISP system utilizing a drum for its principal storage medium, with a surprisingly low time penalty for use of this slow storage device. The techniques include careful segmentation of system programs, allocation of virtual memory to allow address arithmetic for type determination, and a special algorithm for building reasonably linearized lists. A scheme for binding variables is described which is good in this environment and allows for complete compatibility between compiled and interpreted programs with no special declarations.

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