Ceres (workstation)
Encyclopedia
Ceres Workstation
As a followup project to the LilithLilith (computer)
Lilith is the name of custom built workstation using the AMD 2901 bit-slice processor by the group of Niklaus Wirth at ETH Zürich. The project started in 1977 and by 1984 several hundred workstations were in use. It had a high resolution full page display, a mouse, a laser printer interface, and a...
, a machine based on bit-slice technology and the programming language Modula-2
Modula-2
Modula-2 is a computer programming language designed and developed between 1977 and 1980 by Niklaus Wirth at ETH Zurich as a revision of Pascal to serve as the sole programming language for the operating system and application software for the personal workstation Lilith...
, Niklaus Wirth
Niklaus Wirth
Niklaus Emil Wirth is a Swiss computer scientist, best known for designing several programming languages, including Pascal, and for pioneering several classic topics in software engineering. In 1984 he won the Turing Award for developing a sequence of innovative computer languages.-Biography:Wirth...
's group started around 1985 another workstation project based on the NS320xx
NS320xx
The 320xx or NS32000 was a series of microprocessors from National Semiconductor . They were likely the first 32-bit general-purpose microprocessors on the market, but due to a number of factors never managed to become a major player...
CPU by National Semiconductor
National Semiconductor
National Semiconductor was an American semiconductor manufacturer, that specialized in analog devices and subsystems,formerly headquartered in Santa Clara, California, USA. The products of National Semiconductor included power management circuits, display drivers, audio and operational amplifiers,...
. Its operating system
Oberon operating system
Oberon is an operating system developed in the late 1980s at ETH Zürich using the Oberon programming language. It has an innovative visual text-based user interface for activating commands.- History :...
was completely written in Oberon and is an early example of an object oriented operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
.
External links & References
- ETH Computer Science History
- Ceres-1 and Ceres-3 at the Computer History MuseumComputer History MuseumThe Computer History Museum is a museum established in 1996 in Mountain View, California, USA. The Museum is dedicated to preserving and presenting the stories and artifacts of the information age, and exploring the computing revolution and its impact on our lives.-History:The museum's origins...
, Mountain View, California, USA (see also its publications, especially pages 6 & 7 of Core 3.1) - [ftp://ftp.inf.ethz.ch/pub/publications/tech-reports/1xx/070.pdf Hardware Description of the Workstation Ceres] ETH Technical Report 70
- [ftp://ftp.inf.ethz.ch/pub/publications/tech-reports/1xx/168.pdf Hardware Description of the Workstation Ceres-3] ETH Technical Report 168