IBM AIX

IBM AIX

AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive, pronounced /ˌeɪaɪˈɛks/) is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms. Originally released for the IBM 6150 RISC workstation, AIX now supports or has supported a wide variety of hardware platforms, including the IBM RS/6000 series and later IBM POWER and PowerPC-based systems, IBM System i, System/370 mainframes, PS/2 personal computers, and the Apple Network Server. AIX is based on UNIX System V with 4.3BSD-compatible extensions. It is one of four commercial operating systems that are presently certified to The Open Group's UNIX 03 standard. (The others are Mac OS X, Solaris and HP-UX.)

The AIX family of operating systems debuted in 1986, became the standard operating system for the RS/6000 series on its launch in 1990, and is still actively developed by IBM. It is currently supported on IBM Power Systems alongside IBM i and Linux. AIX was the first operating system to utilize journaling file systems, and IBM has continuously enhanced the software with features like processor, disk and network virtualization, dynamic hardware resource allocation (including fractional processor units), and reliability engineering ported from its mainframe designs.