The Ceres Workstation was a

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or computational science, 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 syste ...

computer built by

Niklaus Wirth Niklaus Emil Wirth ( IPA: ) (15 February 1934 – 1 January 2024) was a Swiss computer scientist. He designed several programming languages, including Pascal, and pioneered several classic topics in software engineering. In 1984, he won the Tu ...

's group at

ETH Zurich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

in 1987. The

central processing unit A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary Processor (computing), processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes Instruction (computing), instructions ...

(CPU) is a

National Semiconductor National Semiconductor Corporation was an United States of America, American Semiconductor manufacturing, semiconductor manufacturer, which specialized in analogue electronics, analog devices and subsystems, formerly headquartered in Santa Clara, ...

NS32000 The NS32000, sometimes known as the 32k, is a series of microprocessors produced by National Semiconductor. Design work began around 1980 and it was announced at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in April 1981. The first member o ...

, and the

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 ...

, named '' Oberon System'' is written fully in the

object-oriented programming Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of '' objects''. Objects can contain data (called fields, attributes or properties) and have actions they can perform (called procedures or methods and impl ...

language

Oberon Oberon () is a king of the fairy, fairies in Middle Ages, medieval and Renaissance literature. He is best known as a character in William Shakespeare's play ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'', in which he is King of the Fairies and spouse of Titania ...

. It is an early example of an operating system using basic object-oriented principles and

garbage collection Waste collection is a part of the process of waste management. It is the transfer of solid waste from the point of use and disposal to the point of treatment or landfill. Waste collection also includes the curbside collection of recyclable ...

on the system level and a document centered approach for the

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 fro ...

(UI), as envisaged later with

OpenDoc OpenDoc is a defunct multi-platform software componentry framework standard created by Apple in the 1990s for compound documents, intended as an alternative to Microsoft's proprietary Object Linking and Embedding (OLE). It is one of Apple's ea ...

. Ceres was a follow-up project to the

Lilith Lilith (; ), also spelled Lilit, Lilitu, or Lilis, is a feminine figure in Mesopotamian and Jewish mythology, theorized to be the first wife of Adam and a primordial she-demon. Lilith is cited as having been "banished" from the Garden of Eden ...

workstation, based on AMD

bit slicing Bit slicing is a technique for constructing a processor from modules of processors of smaller bit width, for the purpose of increasing the word length; in theory to make an arbitrary ''n''-bit central processing unit (CPU). Each of these c ...

technology and the

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

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 ...

. On the same hardware, Clemens Szyperski implemented as part of his

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...

(PhD) thesis an operating system named ETHOS, which takes full advantage of object-oriented technologies. A Usenet posting by Szyperski says that Oberon/F, which was later renamed to

BlackBox Component Builder BlackBox Component Builder is an integrated development environment (IDE) optimized for component-based software development developed by a small spin-off company of ETH Zurich, Oberon microsystems AG, in Switzerland. The IDE consists of develop ...

, incorporates ETHOS ideas and principles.

Links

ETH Computer Science History: Lilith & Ceres

Ceres-1
an
Ceres-3
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 ...

, Mountain View, California, USA (see also its publications, especially pages 6 & 7 o
Core 3.1
* (ETH Technical Report 93) * (ETH Technical Report 168)

References

{{microcompu-stub Computer workstations