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From: darrell@sdcsvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.os
Subject: Re: Why no "real" distributed systems?
Message-ID: <2716@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>
Date: Fri, 13-Feb-87 04:00:44 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcsvax.2716
Posted: Fri Feb 13 04:00:44 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 14-Feb-87 13:46:55 EST
Organization: Tolerant Systems, Atlanta GA
Lines: 41
Approved: mod-os@sdcsvax.uucp

In article <2693@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU> darrell@sdcsvax.uucp (Darrell Long) writes:
>Let  me  pose  a  question:  Why  haven't  we  seen  any   "real"
>distributed  systems?   I know of many academic projects, but few
>of them are widely used.  Many never reach fruition.  The closest
>thing  in  wide  use  is  4.3BSD,  but  that  is  certainly NOT a
>distributed system -- it's a conventional operating  system  with
>network  facilities.   On  the  industry  side  we  have the VAX-
>Cluster, but that is  more  akin  to  a  multi-processor  than  a
>distributed system.

Tolerant Systems makes a fault-tolerant, distributed system.  It is
composed of tightly coupled, multiple processor nodes called SBBs (2
main processors with other processors to manage I/O channels and
communications functions).  These SBBs are in turn loosely coupled to
each other in configurations ranging up to 40 in a *single* system (a
single system image contained within a global name space).  Users and
processes "see" *one* system.

The operating system, called TX, is derived from Unix.  Internally it
is vastly different, however the system calls and utilities remain
compatible.  Many systems are in use at customer sites around the
world, with the largest single system installed at a customer site so
far being composed of 33 SBBs managing about 100 GB of disk.

Of course, these systems may be (and sometimes are) networked together
with each other as well as with other systems in general via ethernet,
TCP/IP, FTP, telnet, etc. and with BSD systems in particular via
rlogin, rexec, rwho, rsh, and friends over the basic networking
facilities.

UUCP:	...ihnp4!akgua!rebel!george
	...{hplabs,seismo}!gatech!rebel!george
Phone:	(404) 662-1533
Snail:	Tolerant Systems, 6961 Peachtree Industrial, Norcross, GA  30071


-- 
Darrell Long
Department of Computer Science & Engineers, UC San Diego, La Jolla CA 92109
ARPA: Darrell@Beowulf.UCSD.EDU  UUCP: darrell@sdcsvax.uucp
Operating Systems submissions to: mod-os@sdcsvax.uucp