ARX was an unreleased Mach-like

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

written in Modula-2+ developed by

Acorn Computers Acorn Computers Ltd. was a British computer company established in Cambridge, England, in 1978. The company produced a number of computers which were especially popular in the United Kingdom, UK, including the Acorn Electron and the Acorn Archi ...

Ltd in the Acorn Research Centre (ARC)

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

(UK) and later by

Olivetti Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been pa ...

- which purchased Acorn - for Acorn's new

Archimedes Archimedes of Syracuse (;; ) was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor from the ancient city of Syracuse in Sicily. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scienti ...

personal computers based on the

ARM architecture ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures for computer processors, configure ...

reduced instruction set computer In computer engineering, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a complex instruction set compu ...

(RISC)

central processing unit A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...

(CPUs).

Overview

According to the project Application ManagerTOP3 smart moves
Richard Cownie. Real World Technologies (September 2009) Richard Cownie, during the project, while Acorn was developing the kernel, it used the C and Acorn Modula Execution Library (CAMEL) in the Acorn Extended Modula-2 (AEM2) compiler (ported from

Modula-2 Modula-2 is a structured, procedural programming language developed between 1977 and 1985/8 by Niklaus Wirth at ETH Zurich. It was created as the language for the operating system and application software of the Lilith personal workstation. It w ...

ETH Zurich (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , a ...

(ETH) using Econet hardware). Though never released externally, CAMEL was ported to use on

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, ...

Unix computers. In an effort to port Sun's

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''worksta ...

s Sun NeWS to the Archimedes, David Chase developed a compiler based on AEM2 for the programming language Modula-3. ARX was a preemptive multitasking, multithreading, multi-user

. Much of the OS ran in

user mode A modern computer operating system usually segregates virtual memory into user space and kernel space. Primarily, this separation serves to provide memory protection and hardware protection from malicious or errant software behaviour. Kernel ...

and as a result suffered performance problems due to switches into

kernel mode In computer science, hierarchical protection domains, often called protection rings, are mechanisms to protect data and functionality from faults (by improving fault tolerance) and malicious behavior (by providing computer security). Compute ...

to perform mutexes, which led to the introduction of the SWP instruction to the instruction set of the ARMv2a version of the ARM processor. It had support of a file system for optical ( write once read many (WORM)) disks and featured a window system, a window toolkit (and a direct manipulation

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

(UI) editor) and an Interscript-based text editor, for enriched documents written in Interpress (a

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

precursor). The OS had to be fitted in a 512 KB

read-only memory Read-only memory (ROM) is a type of non-volatile memory used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be electronically modified after the manufacture of the memory device. Read-only memory is useful for storing s ...

(ROM) ROM image. This suggests that ARX had a

microkernel In computer science, a microkernel (often abbreviated as μ-kernel) is the near-minimum amount of software that can provide the mechanisms needed to implement an operating system (OS). These mechanisms include low-level address space management, ...

-type design. It was not finished in time to be used in the Acorn Archimedes range of computers, which shipped in 1987 with an operating system named Arthur, later renamed

RISC OS RISC OS is a computer operating system originally designed by Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridge, England. First released in 1987, it was designed to run on the ARM chipset, which Acorn had designed concurrently for use in its new line of Archi ...

, derived from the earlier Machine Operating System (MOS) from Acorn's earlier

8-bit In computer architecture, 8-bit integers or other data units are those that are 8 bits wide (1 octet). Also, 8-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) architectures are those that are based on registers or data buses of ...

BBC Micro The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an empha ...

range. A set of Usenet posts detailing why ARX was abandoned for RISC OS. Confusion persisted about the nature of ARX amongst the wider public and press, with some believing that ARX was Acorn's own Unix variant, with this view being refined in time to accommodate ARX as Acorn's own attempt to deliver a "UNIX look-alike" whose development had been abandoned in favour of a traditional Unix version for the Archimedes, which ultimately emerged as RISC iX. The Acorn Research Centre was acquired by

References

External links

ARX features

History of the addition of the SWP instruction to the ARM3 instruction set
{{DEFAULTSORT:Arx (operating system) Acorn operating systems ARM operating systems Discontinued operating systems Microkernel-based operating systems Microkernels

Overview

See also

References

External links