Advanced RISC Computing - Windows NT, MIPS Magnum, Advanced Computing Environment, Dec Multia, Sgi Tezro, NEC Riscstation, Jazz (Paperback)

Chapters: Windows Nt, Mips Magnum, Advanced Computing Environment, Dec Multia, Sgi Tezro, Nec Riscstation, Jazz, Shablamm Nitro-Vlb, Arcs, Inmos G364 Framebuffer, Acer Pica, Deskstation Tyne. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 56. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was originally designed to be a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement consumer versions of Windows that were based on MS-DOS. NT was the first fully 32-bit version of Windows, whereas its consumer-oriented counterparts, Windows 3.1x and Windows 9x, were 16-bit/32-bit hybrids. Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Home Server, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 are based on Windows NT, although they are not branded as Windows NT. Although various Microsoft publications, including a 1998 question-and-answer session with Bill Gates, reveal that the letters 'NT' were expanded to 'New Technology' for marketing purposes, they originally stood for 'N-Ten', the codename of Intel i860 processor that NT was initially developed for. However, they no longer carry any specific meaning. A main design goal of NT was hardware and software portability. Initial development was for the Intel i860 RISC then MIPS until i386 became available. Versions of NT family operating systems have been released for a variety of processor architectures, initially Intel IA-32, MIPS R3000/R4000 and Alpha, with PowerPC, Itanium and AMD64 supported in later releases. The idea was to have a common code base with a custom Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) for each platform. However, ...More: http: //booksllc.net/?id=2129148