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AIX ('''Advanced Interactive eXecutive''') is a Proprietary Operating System developed by IBM based on UNIX System V . Before the product was ever marketed, the Acronym ''AIX'' originally stood for '''A'''dvanced '''I'''BM UNI'''X'''. AIX has pioneered numerous Network Operating System enhancements, introducing new innovations later adopted by Unix-like operating systems; it is often one of the first operating systems to implement a new innovation in Software Architecture as a sophisticated software technology. The Scalable AIX 5L 5.3 supports up to 64 Central Processing Unit s and two Terabyte s (TB) of Random Access Memory . The JFS2 File System —first introduced by IBM as part of AIX—supports Computer File s and Partition s up to 16 TB in size. DEVELOPMENT AIX V1, introduced in 1986, was based on System V Release 3. IBM later ported AIX to the RS/6000 platform as AIX/6000; since 1989 , AIX has served as the RS/6000's primary operating system. In developing AIX, IBM and INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation (whom IBM contracted) also incorporated source code from Berkeley Software Distribution 4.2 and 4.3. In the SCO V. IBM Lawsuit filed in 2003, the SCO Group alleged that (among other infractions) IBM misappropriated licensed Source Code from UNIX System V Release 4 for incorporation into AIX. IBM maintains that their license was irrevocable. SUPPORTED ARCHITECTURES
AIX on IBM Mainframes In 1988, IBM announced AIX/370. AIX/370 was IBM's first attempt to offer Unix-like functionality for their mainframe line, specifically the System/370 . AIX/370 was released in 1990 with functional equivalence to System V Release 2 and 4.3BSD as well as IBM enhancements. With the introduction of the ESA/390 architecture, AIX/370 was rebranded as AIX/ESA in 1991 and ran on the System/390 platform. Unlike AIX on its other platforms, AIX on the mainframe never ran as the host operating system, but rather as a guest under VM . AIX on the mainframe had little success and UNIX functionality was instead added as an option with the existing mainframe operating system, MVS , which became MVS/ESA OpenEdition in 1993. VERSIONS
INTERFACES Graphical The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) is AIX's default Graphical User Interface . As part of Linux Affinity and the free AIX Toolbox for Linux Applications (ATLA), open-source KDE and GNOME desktop are also available. System Management Console SMIT is the System Management Interface Tool for AIX. It allows a user to navigate a menu hierarchy of commands, rather than using the command line. Invocation is typically achieved with the command smit. Experienced system administrators make use of the F6 accelerator which generates the command line that SMIT will invoke to complete the proposed task. SMIT also generates a log of commands that are performed (smit.log), which can be condensed into a script for automating a series of tasks on numerous systems.smit and smitty refer to the same program, though smitty invokes the text-based version, while smit will invoke an X Window based interface if possible; however, if smit determines that X Window capabilities are not present, it will present the text-based version instead of failing. Determination of X Window capabilities is typically performed by checking for the existence of the DISPLAY variable.HISTORY AIX Version 1 AIX version 1 was developed by IBM in conjunction with INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation , and was based in part on PC/IX, an operating system from Interactive Systems that ran on IBM/PC and compatible systems. Installation media consisted of eight 1.2M Floppy Disk s. AIX Version 2 AIX version 2 was a port of PC/IX to the IBM/RT Unix workstation. Unlike the IBM/PC, IBM/XT and IBM/AT systems, which were based on Intel 8086 and 80286 chips, respectively, the RT was based on the ROMP chip, the first commercial RISC chip ever, based on a design, the IBM 801 , pioneered at IBM Research. I/O was provided by eight ISA Bus slots. A typically configured RT came wth 4MB of memory, maxing out at 16MB, and with a 20MB hard drive, upgradable to 300MB or more with external SCSI cabinets. Also standard were mouse and a 1280x1024 pixel-addressible 8-bit grayscale display and either a 4MB/sec Token-ring network adapter, or a 10Mbit/sec 10Base2 (coaxial cable) Ethernet adapter. The performance of the RT, in comparison with other contemporaneous Unix workstations, was not outstanding. In particular, the Floating Point performance was poor, and was scandalized mid-life with the discovery of a bug in the floating point square root routine. Sales were also hobbled by the poor commission structure given to the IBM salesmen: it was structured along the same lines as the PC-class systems. With a typical price of about $20,000, which was much higher than the PC's, it was a hard sell. The resulting tiny commissions caused most of the IBM salesforce to be utterly disinterested in selling the product. Approximately 23,000 RT's were sold over the lifetime of the product, with some 4,000 going into IBM internal development and sales organizations. One of the novel aspects of the RT design was the use of a Microkernel . The keyboard, mouse, display, disk drives and network were all controlled by a microkernel, which allowed multiple operating systems to be booted and run at the same time. One could "hotkey" from one operating system to the next using the Alt-Tab key combination. Each OS in turn would get possession of the keyboard, mouse and display. Besides AIXv2, the PICK OS was built in this microkernel. The PICK was unique in being a unified operating system and database, and ran various accounting applications. It was popular with retail merchants, and acounted for about 4,000 units of sales. Much of the AIXv2 kernel was written in the , licensed from Sun Microsystems , and Distributed Services or DS. DS had the distinction of being built on top of SNA, and thereby being fully compatible with DS on the IBM midrange AS/400 and mainframe systems. For the graphical user interfaces, AIXv2 came with the X10R3 and later the X10R4 and X11 versions of the X Window System from MIT, together with the Athena Widget Set . Compilers for Fortran and C were available. One of the more popular desktop applications was the PageMaker book publishing software. AIX Version 3 The release of AIX version 3 coincided with the announcement of the first RS/6000 models. The RS/6000 was unique in that it not only outperformed all other machines in integer compute performance, but also beat the competition by a ''factor of 10'' in floating-point performance. AIXv3 innovated in several ways on the software side. It was the first operating system to introduce the idea of a . AIXv3 also ditched the microkernel of AIXv2, a contentious move that resulted in v3 being somewhat more "pure" (and containing no PL/1 code) than v2. Other notable subsytems included:
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