The Difficulties of 1973
The difficulties of the development lead to a
management crisis at the end of 1972. It was seen unlikely
that NPL Level2 was able to reach the market at the end of
1973 as originally planned by Upper Management --less than
3 years of design and development. Jean BELLEC was
replaced by Claude CARRE as the responsible for
development in Paris. The software organization of Hardware
engineering was merged into the Software development
organization.
At the same period (early 1973), Georges
LEPICARD who has been one of the key architect of the
NPL left the company to head the scientific direction of CII.
He will return in 1976 after the merger between Honeywell
Bull and CII to lead the "Leo" project which was marketed
as DPS-7/80.
The 4A Back-up
A contingency secret plan for a Back-up was established in
Boston; it was unveiled only in its support of H200 emulator.
This project named as 4A Back-up was managed by William
HEFFNER an original GCOS3 designer, who later left to
DEC to become VMS manager.
This OS differed from Bull Level 2
design by a more interactive operation: one process per
"user" and by a simpler and less effective virtual memory
management: let the space per user increase and flush the
address space in case of overflow conflicts. This system
used the same compilers as Level2 and the "competition"
period had a 8 months' duration.
End of P8 Project
Ugo GAGLIARDI, by April 73, had to step down
from direct Boston (BCO) responsibilities which were taken
by Walker DIX who then cumulated the engineering
responsibility of Phoenix --then being reborn of its ashes, and
of Billerica.
The P8 Project was cancelled, at the best pleasure
of Paris hardware designers. In fact, P8 did not show enough
performance advantages from P7 from which it differs not by
technology, nor by the word length, but only by a cache
memory and better scientific performances. That machine did
not implement multi-processor, although this was initially
contemplated.
The NPL Technical Office was dispossessed from
program management responsibilities and assigned to the
technical cooperation between the HISI project (level62), the
Bull Level64 project and the Phoenix Level66 development.
John WEILL head of the Research Center was given the
responsibility of the overall project coordination and he
appointed William FRINK to insure Level64 software
coordination. Ernie DIETERICH , with Michel ROCHER as
an assistant, was later assigned to Paris to manage the
GCOS-64 plans.
follow-on