System/370 and Virtual Memory Operating Systems
When System/370 was announced in 1970 it offered essentially the same facilities as System/360 but with about 4 times the processor speeds of similarly-priced System/360 CPUs. Then in 1972 IBM announced "System/370 Advanced Functions", of which the main item was that future sales of System/370 would include virtual memory capability and this could also be retro-fitted to existing System/370 CPUs. Hence IBM also committed to delivering enhanced operating systems which could support the use of virtual memory.
Most of the new operating systems were distinguished from their predecessors by the presence of "/VS" in their names. "VS" stands for "Virtual Storage" - IBM avoided the term "memory", allegedly because it might be interpreted to imply that their computers could forget things.
All of today's IBM mainframe operating systems except z/TPF are descendants of those included in the "System/370 Advanced Functions" announcement - z/TPF is a descendant of ACP, the system which IBM initially developed to support high-volume airline reservations applications.
Read more about this topic: History Of IBM Mainframe Operating Systems
Famous quotes containing the words system, virtual, memory, operating and/or systems:
“The moral immune system of this country has been weakened and attacked, and the AIDS virus is the perfect metaphor for it. The malignant neglect of the last twelve years has led to breakdown of our country’s immune system, environmentally, culturally, politically, spiritually and physically.”
—Barbra Streisand (b. 1942)
“Neither dead nor alive, the hostage is suspended by an incalculable outcome. It is not his destiny that awaits for him, nor his own death, but anonymous chance, which can only seem to him something absolutely arbitrary.... He is in a state of radical emergency, of virtual extermination.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“And year by year our memory fades
From all the circle of the hills.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“I think there are innumerable gods. What we on earth call God is a little tribal God who has made an awful mess. Certainly forces operating through human consciousness control events.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“What avails it that you are a Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites merely.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)