[Info-vax] Dave Cutler, Prism, DEC, Microsoft, etc.

[JF Mezei]

VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:

> I didn't know that Cutler was a hardware guy.

OK, I had opened the document in quicklook and couldn'to select text
from it. (quicklook is apple's implementation of
dir/show=formatted_content  filename)

Now, I have it on a PDF reader:

##
Evolution of the architecture
For almost a year, the VAX development
and review teams worked
back and forth on the VAX architecture.
After four versions, the
proposed architecture was found
to be too complex, too expensive,
and too complicated to execute.

The company formed a group that
became known as “The Blue Ribbon
Committee” that included three
hardware engineers: Bill Strecker,
Richie Lary, and Steve Rothman,
and three software engineers: Dave
Cutler, Dick Hustvedt, and Peter
Lipman
##


##
With the VAX hardware development underway, the software
development—code named Starlet—began a few months later in June of
1975. Roger Gourd led the project and software engineers Dave Cutler, Dick
Hustvedt, and Peter Lipman were technical project leaders, each responsible
for a different part of the operating system.
##

##
After the 750, DIGITAL
designed the MicroVAX I—one of the first DIGITAL projects to include
silicon compilers—with the consulting help of Carver Meade, a pioneer in
integrated circuit design. Building on the experience of the MicroVAX I,
the company soon followed with the more powerful MicroVAX II.
While the V-11 was designed as a full VAX implementation, the MicroVAX I
was designed as a VAX subset. The MicroVAX I system was developed
in the company’s Seattle facility, headed by Dave Cutler. Because the
MicroVAX I was a much simpler design than the V-11, and because of the
use of the silicon compiler tools, it was completed before the V-11.
##


##
“The sense I always had was that there were four key technical
visionaries at
the beginning of MicroVAX: Dave Cutler, with his creation of the MicroVAX
I system for early software development; Bob Supnik, who headed up
MicroVAX chip development and also wrote the microcode; Jesse Lipcon
who headed up MicroVAX II Server Development; and Dick Hustvedt, who
drove the MicroVMS Software Strategy.”
—Jay Nichols
Computer Special Systems, Manager of Engineering
##


##
Prism: VMS on RISC technology
DIGITAL began working on RISC technology in 1986 when Jack Smith,
VP of Operations, tapped Dave Cutler on the shoulder and said, “You will be
RISC Czar for DIGITAL. Organize a program.” The program, code named
Prism, was to develop the company’s RISC machine. Its operating system
would embody the next generation of design principles and have a
compatibility layer for UNIX and VMS.
##


##
Alpha was very much the “son of Prism.” The primary changes made to
produce Alpha were for VMS compatibility. The original Prism design had
serious compatibility problems with the VAX and VMS in two areas—
numerical data types and privileged architecture.
##


##
“When our customers had beta
copies of Windows NT, they told us
that it felt like they were revisiting
an old friend. That’s not surprising
because the chief architect of both
operating systems was Dave Cutler.
So there is a natural affinity from a
technical perspective between the two
environments. Wes Melling is often
quoted calling it the ‘Cutler effect.’”
—Mary Ellen Fortier
Director, OpenVMS Marketing
##