Locus Computing Corporation

Infobox Defunct Company
company_name = Locus Computing Corporation
company_
company_type = Private
foundation = Start date|1982
founder = Gerald J. Popek
location_city = Inglewood, California
location_country = USA
key_people = Gerald J. Popek, CTO and chairman.
industry = Computer Software
products = LOCUS AIX PS/2, AIX 370 AIX TCF OSF/1 AD Merge UnixWare Non Stop Clusters
services =
num_employees =
defunct = End date|1995|8|17
fate = Acquired by Platinum Technology Inc.

Locus Computing Corporation was formed in 1982 by Gerald J. Popek [cite web
url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb4804/is_198911/ai_n17443977
title=Locus Computing Corp. (company profile)
accessdate=2008-09-23] to commercialize the technologies developed for the LOCUS distributed operating system at UCLA. Locus was notable for commercializing single-system image software and producing the Merge package which allowed the use of DOS and Windows 3.1 software on Unix systems.

Locus was acquired by Platinum Technology Inc in 1995. [cite web
url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_/ai_17195055
title=PLATINUM technology And Locus Computing Finalize Acquisition; Locus Computing officially becomes a PLATINUM technology subsidiary
accessdate=6-10-2008]

Products

AIX for IBM PS/2 and System/370

LOCUS was commissioned by IBM to produce a version of the AIX UNIX based operating system for the PS/2 and System/370 ranges. The single-system image capabilities of the LOCUS were incorporated under the name of AIX TCF (transparent computing facility). [cite web
title=IBM TAPS LOCUS FOR KEY AUX UNIX FEATURES, TCF FILE SYSTEM
url=http://www.cbronline.com/news/ibm_taps_locus_for_key_aux_unix_features_tcf_file_system
accessdate=6-10-2008]

OSF/1 AD for the Intel Paragon

LOCUS were commissioned by Intel to produce a multiprocessor version of OSF/1 for the Intel Paragon a massively parallel NORMA (No Remote Memory Access) system.The system was known as OSF/1 AD, where AD stood for "Advanced Development".

To allow inter processor process migration and communication between the individual nodes of the Paragon system they re-worked the TCF technology from LOCUS as Transparent Network Computing, or TNC, inventing the concept of the VPROC (virtual process) an analogy of the VNODE (virtual inode) from the SunOS virtual file system. [Citation
last = Patience
first = Simon
last2 = Rabii
first2 = Faramarz
date = 1993-09-15
title = The Design of the Process Management Component of OSF/1 AD Version 2
url = ftp://ftp.opengroup.org/pub/ri/os/papers/osf1ad2_papers/osf1/pm_design.93.11.ps
accessdate = 2008-10-01]

UnixWare Non Stop Clusters

LOCUS were commissioned by Tandem Computers to include their TNC technology in a highly available single-system image clustering system based on SCO UnixWare, Non Stop Clusters. [Citation
last = Zabarsky
first = Jeffrey
author-link =
year =
date =
publication-date = 1998
contribution = Failure recovery for distributed processes in single system image clusters
contribution-url = http://ipdps.cc.gatech.edu/1998/ftpds/zabby.pdf
editor-last =
editor-first =
editor-link =
editor2-last =
editor2-first =
editor2-link =
title = Parallel and Distributed Processing
edition =
series = Lecture Notes in Computer Science
place =
publication-place =
publisher = Springer Berlin / Heidelberg
volume = 1388/1998
pages = 564-583
id =
isbn = 978-3-540-64359-3
doi = 10.1007/3-540-64359-1
oclc =
url =] [Citation
last = Walker
first = Bruce J.
author-link =
last2 = Steel
first2 = Douglas
author2-link =
publication-date = 1999
contribution = Implementing a Full Single System Image UnixWare Cluster: Middleware vs Underware
contribution-url = http://www.buyya.com/pdpta99/douglass.ps.gz
editor-last = Arabnia
editor-first = Hamid R.
editor-link =
editor2-last =
editor2-first =
editor2-link =
edition =
series =
place = Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
publication-place =
publisher = CSREA Press
volume = Volume 6
pages = 2767-2773
id =
doi =
url =
title = International conference on parallel and distributed processing techniques and applications
isbn = 1-892512-15-7
publisher = Computer Science Research, Education, and Applications Press
location = [Las Vegas, Nev.?]
oclc = 48259379]

During the course of the project LOCUS were acquired by Platinum Technology Inc, who transferred the team working on Non Stop Clusters to Tandem.

Tandem were later bought by Compaq. The UnixWare product was acquired from SCO by Caldera who discontinued commercialization of the Non Stop Clusters product in favor of the simpler Reliant HA system. Compaq then decided to release the Non Stop Clusters code as open source software, porting it to Linux as the OpenSSI project.

Merge

Merge was a system developed by LOCUS in late 1984 for the AT&T 6300+ computer, which allowed DOS (and hence DOS applications) to be run under the native UNIX SVR2 operating system.

The 6300+ used an Intel 80286 processor and included special purpose circuitry to allow virtualization of the 8086 instruction set used by DOS.

Merge was later modified to use the Virtual 8086 mode provided by Intel 80386 processors. It was sold for Microport SVR3 and later SCO Unix.

References