IBM Future Systems project
Encyclopedia : I : IB : IBM : IBM Future Systems project
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, IBM considered modifying radically the conception of their computing environment to avoid a number of foreseeable bottlenecks in the 1980s given the predicted rate of change. This became the IBM Future Systems project (FS).
Because it implied a major departure from the S/360 concept, which would not have allowed any easy migration from System/360 to FS (just as later no easy migration path would exist between the Apple II and the Macintosh), the project was dropped in the mid-seventies due to user resistance to products which were not forward compatible.
Although FS was dropped as a whole, bits and pieces of Future Systems technology were incorporated in the following parts of IBM's mainstream product line:
- the 3800 laser printer, and some works that would lead to the 3279 terminal and GDDM
- the 3850 automatic magnetic library
- the relational database approach for system files, implemented later in the System/38 and AS/400
- the notion of automatic file migration without loss of identity would be used by Macintosh HFS
- network enhancements concerning VTAM and NCP
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