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David Neil Cutler Sr. (born March 13, 1942) is an American
software engineer Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...
. He developed several computer
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
s, namely Microsoft Windows NT, and
Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...
's RSX-11M, VAXELN, and VMS.


Personal history

Cutler was born in
Lansing, Michigan Lansing () is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Michigan. The most populous city in Ingham County, Michigan, Ingham County, parts of the city extend into Eaton County, Michigan, Eaton County and nort ...
and grew up in
DeWitt, Michigan DeWitt is a city in Clinton County, Michigan, Clinton County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 4,776 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. The city is located north of Interstate 69 in Michigan, Interstate 69 and west of ...
. After graduating from Olivet College, Michigan, in 1965, he went to work for
DuPont Dupont, DuPont, Du Pont, duPont, or du Pont may refer to: People * Dupont (surname) Dupont, also spelled as DuPont, duPont, Du Pont, or du Pont is a French surname meaning "of the bridge", historically indicating that the holder of the surname re ...
. Cutler holds at least 20 patents, and is affiliate faculty in the Computer Science Department at the
University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...
. Cutler is an avid
auto racing Auto racing (also known as car racing, motor racing, or automobile racing) is a motorsport involving the racing of automobiles for competition. In North America, the term is commonly used to describe all forms of automobile sport including non ...
driver. He competed in the Atlantic Championship from 1996 to 2002, scoring a career best of 8th on the
Milwaukee Mile The Milwaukee Mile is a oval race track in the central United States, located on the grounds of the Wisconsin State Fair Park in West Allis, Wisconsin, a suburb west of Milwaukee. Its grandstand and bleachers seats approximately 37,000 spectat ...
in 2000. Cutler was elected a member of the
National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...
in 1994 for the design and engineering of commercially successful operating systems. Cutler is a member of Adelphic Alpha Pi Fraternity at Olivet College, Michigan.


DuPont (1965 to 1971)

Cutler's first exposure to computers came when he was tasked to perform a
computer simulation Computer simulation is the running of a mathematical model on a computer, the model being designed to represent the behaviour of, or the outcome of, a real-world or physical system. The reliability of some mathematical models can be determin ...
s model for one of DuPont's customers using IBM's GPSS-3 language on an IBM model 7044. This work led to an interest in how computers and their operating systems worked.


Digital Equipment Corporation (1971 to 1988)

Cutler left DuPont to pursue his interest in computer systems, beginning with
Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...
in 1971. He worked at Digital's headquarters in Maynard, Massachusetts.


RSX-11M


VMS

In April 1975, DEC began a hardware project, code-named Star, to design a 32-bit virtual address extension to its
PDP-11 The PDP–11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers originally sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the late 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of a ...
. In June 1975, Cutler, together with Dick Hustvedt and Peter Lipman, were appointed the technical project leaders for the software project, code-named Starlet, to develop a totally new operating system for the Star family of processors. These two projects were tightly integrated from the beginning. The three technical leaders of the Starlet project together with three technical leaders of the Star project formed the "Blue Ribbon Committee" at DEC that produced the fifth design evolution for the programs. The design featured simplifications to the memory management and process scheduling schemes of the earlier proposals and the architecture was accepted. The Star and Starlet projects culminated in the development of the VAX-11/780 superminicomputer and the VAX/VMS operating system, respectively.


PRISM and MICA projects

DEC began working on a new CPU using
reduced instruction set computer In electronics and computer science, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer architecture designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a com ...
(RISC) design principles in 1986. Cutler, who was working in DEC's DECwest facility in Bellevue, Washington, was selected to head PRISM, a project to develop the company's RISC machine. Its operating system, code named
MICA Micas ( ) are a group of silicate minerals whose outstanding physical characteristic is that individual mica crystals can easily be split into fragile elastic plates. This characteristic is described as ''perfect basal cleavage''. Mica is co ...
, was to embody the next generation of design principles and have a compatibility layer for Unix and VMS. The RISC machine was to be based on
emitter-coupled logic In electronics, emitter-coupled logic (ECL) is a high-speed integrated circuit bipolar transistor logic family. ECL uses a bipolar junction transistor (BJT) differential amplifier with single-ended input and limited emitter current to avoid th ...
(ECL) technology, and was one of three ECL projects DEC was undertaking at the time. Funding the research and development of multiple ECL projects yielding products that would ultimately compete against each other was a strain. Of the three ECL projects, the VAX 9000 was the only one that was directly commercialized. Primarily because of the early successes of the PMAX advanced development project and the need for differing business models, PRISM was canceled in 1988 in favor of PMAX. PRISM later surfaced as the basis of DEC's
Alpha Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter ''aleph'' , whose name comes from the West Semitic word for ' ...
family of computer systems.


Attitude towards Unix

Cutler is known for his disdain for
Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
. Said one team member who worked with Cutler:


Microsoft (1988 – present)


Microsoft Windows NT

Cutler left DEC for Microsoft in October 1988 and led the development of Windows NT. Later, he worked on targeting Windows NT to DEC's 64-bit
Alpha Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter ''aleph'' , whose name comes from the West Semitic word for ' ...
architecture then on
Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the server and business markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RT ...
. After the demise of Windows on Alpha (and the demise of DEC), he was instrumental in porting Windows to AMD's new 64-bit
AMD64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new operating modes: 64-bit mode an ...
architecture. He was involved with the
Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
Pro x64 and
Windows Server Windows Server (formerly Windows NT Server) is a brand name for Server (computing), server-oriented releases of the Windows NT operating system (OS) that have been developed by Microsoft since 1993. The first release under this brand name i ...
2003 SP1 x64 releases. He moved to working on Microsoft's Live Platform in August 2006. Cutler was awarded the prestigious status of Senior Technical Fellow at Microsoft.


Microsoft Windows Azure

At the 2008
Professional Developers Conference Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) was a series of conferences for software developers; the conference was held infrequently to coincide with beta releases of the Microsoft Windows, Windows operating system, and showcased topic ...
, Microsoft announced Azure Services Platform, a
cloud-based Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
which Microsoft is developing. During the conference keynote, Cutler was mentioned as a lead developer on the project, along with Amitabh Srivastava.


Microsoft Xbox

In January 2012, a spokesperson for Microsoft confirmed that Cutler was no longer working on Windows Azure, and had joined the
Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand that consists of four main home video game console lines, as well as application software, applications (games), the streaming media, streaming service Xbox Cloud Gaming, and online services such as the Xbox networ ...
team. In May 2013, Microsoft announced the Xbox One console, and Cutler was mentioned as having worked in developing the host OS of the new gaming device. Apparently his work was focused on creating an optimized version of Microsoft's Hyper-V Host OS specifically designed for Xbox One.


Awards

* Recognized as a 2007 National Medal of Technology and Innovation Laureate, awarded on 29 September 2008 at a White House ceremony in Washington, DC. * Honored as a Computer History Museum Fellow on 16 April 2016 at the
Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a computer museum in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the Information Age, and explores the Digital Revolution, computing revolution and its impact ...
in Mountain View, California.


References


Bibliography

*


External links

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi1Lq79mLeE Interview between Dave's Garage and David Cutler, Cutler discusses his career throughout his life
Transcript or oral history interview with Dave Cutler by the Computer History Museum

Dave Cutler video on his career as part of his Computer History Museum Fellow award
on
YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
* * *
Dave Cutler: The Mind Behind Windows
on
YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cutler, Dave 1942 births Living people American computer programmers American computer scientists Microsoft technical fellows Microsoft Windows people Digital Equipment Corporation people Kernel programmers Atlantic Championship drivers People from Lansing, Michigan Racing drivers from Michigan Operating system people Olivet Comets football players