| Workplace OS | |
|---|---|
 OS/2 Warp Connect (PowerPC Edition) 1.0, based on Workplace OS | |
| Developer | IBM |
| Written in | C,C++ |
| OS family | Universal |
| Working state | Discontinued |
| Source model | Closed source,Machopen source |
| Released to manufacturing | December 15, 1995; 30 years ago (1995-12-15)[1] |
| Final preview | OS/2 Warp Connect (PowerPC Edition) 1.0 / January 5, 1996; 30 years ago (1996-01-05)[1] |
| Marketing target | Global |
| Available in | English |
| Supported platforms | PowerPC |
| Kernel type | Microkernel |
| Influenced by | Mach kernel,Apple Pink |
| Default user interface | Workplace Shell |
| Preceded by | OS/2,AIX,OS/400, others. |
| Articles in the series | |
| AIM alliance,Taligent,PowerPC | |
Workplace OS was anIBM project which unsuccessfully attempted to replace multipleoperating systems with compatibility "personalities" running on top of aMach-basedmicrokernel.[2] The intention was that personalities would allow a single machine to run unmodified applications from multiple operating systems such asUnix orOS/2. It was the product of a research program in 1991 which yielded a design named the "Grand Unifying Theory of Systems "(GUTS). The GUTS project evolved into Workplace OS after Apple demonstrated itsPink operating system prototype to IBM's GUTS design team, who incorporated many ideas from Pink into their own design.[3]
Workplace OS was intended to improvesoftware portability and maintenance costs by recruiting all operating system vendors to convert their products into Workplace OS personalities. That included Pink when it becameTaligent, which was co-developed with Workplace OS. In 1995, IBM reported that "Nearly 20 corporations, universities, and research institutes worldwide have licensed the microkernel, laying the foundation for a completely open microkernel standard."[4] Workplace OS was at the core of IBM's new strategic direction for the entire company, and was intended as the primary operating system forPowerPC hardware, to allow IBM to effectively compete with theWintel duopoly.
With protracted development spanning four years and $2 billion (or 0.6% of IBM's revenue for that period), the project suffereddevelopment hell characterized byworkplace politics,feature creep, and thesecond-system effect. Many idealistic key assumptions made by IBM architects about software complexity and system performance were never tested until far too late in development, then immediately proven infeasible. In January 1996, the first and only preview of Workplace OS was released under theOS/2 family with the name "OS/2 Warp Connect (PowerPC Edition)". It was limited to special order by select IBM customers, and had limited functionality compared with the original OS/2 for x86.[5] The entire Workplace OS platform was discontinued in March due to very low market demand, including that for enterprise PowerPC hardware.
AUniversity of California case study described Workplace OS as both "one of the most significant operating systems software investments of all time" and "one of the largest operating system failures in modern times".[2]
By 1990, IBM acknowledged the software industry to be in a state of perpetual crisis. This was due to the chaos from the inordinate complexity of software engineering inherited by its legacy ofprocedural programming practices since the 1960s. Large software projects were too difficult, fragile, expensive, and time-consuming to create and maintain; they required too many programmers, who were too busy with fixing bugs and adding incremental features to create new applications. Different operating systems were alien to each other, each of them running their own proprietary applications. IBM envisioned "life after maximum entropy" through "operating systems unification at last"[6] and wanted to lay a new worldview for the future of computing.
IBM sought a new world view of a unified foundation for computing, based upon the efficient reuse of common work. It wanted to break the traditional monolithic software development cycle of producingalphas, thenbetas, then testing, and repeating over the entire operating system — instead, compartmentalizing the development and quality assurance of individual unit objects.[3]: 19 This new theory of unifying existing legacy software and the new way of building all new software, was nicknamed the Grand Unified Theory of Systems or GUTS.[3]: 20
Coincidentally, Apple already had a two-year-old secret prototype of itsmicrokernel-basedobject-oriented operating system with application frameworks, namedPink.[3]: 20 The theory of GUTS was expanded by Pink, yielding Workplace OS.
IBM described its newmicrokernel architecture as scalable, modular, portable, client/server distributed, and open and fully licensable both in binary andsource code forms.[3]: 376–377 This microkernel-based unified architecture was intended to allow all software to become scalable both upward intosupercomputing space and downward into mobile and embedded space.[3]: 18–19
Leveraged upon a single microkernel, IBM wanted to achieve its grand goal of unification by simplifying complex development models into reusable objects and frameworks, and all while retaining complete backward compatibility with legacy and heritage systems.[3]: 3 Multiple-library support would allow developers to progressively migrate select source code objects to 64-bit mode, with side-by-side selectable 32-bit and 64-bit modes. IBM's book on Workplace OS says, "Maybe we can get to a 64-bit operating system in our lifetime."[3]: 19 IBM intended shareable objects to eventually reduce the footprint of each personality, scaling them down to a handheld computing profile.
At the base of Workplace OS is afork of theMach 3.0 microkernel (release mk68) originally developed byCarnegie Mellon University and heavily modified by theOpen Software Foundation's Research Institute. Officially named "IBM Microkernel",[7][8][9]: 14–15 [10]: 119 it provides five core features: IPC, virtual memory support, processes and threads, host and processor sets, and I/O and interrupt support.[11]
On top of the IBM Microkernel is a layer of shared services (originally called Personality Neutral Services or PNS[3]: 3 ) to cater to some or all of the personalities above them. Shared services are endian-neutral,[6][3]: 24 have no user interface, and can serve other shared services.[3]: 379 [6]Byte summarizes that shared services "can include not only low-level file system and device-driver services but also higher-level networking and even database services. [Workplace OS's lead architect Paul Giangarra] believes that locating such application-oriented services close to the microkernel will improve their efficiency by reducing the number of function calls and enabling the service to integrate its owndevice drivers." This layer contains the file systems, the scheduler, network services, and security services. IBM first attempted a device driver model completely based in userspace to maximize its dynamic configuration, but later found the need to blend it betweenuserspace and kernelspace,[11] while keeping as much as possible in userspace.[3]: 176 The Adaptive Driver Architecture (ADD) was designed for the creation of layered device drivers, which are easily portable to other hardware and operating system platforms beyond Workplace OS,[3]: 174 and which consist of about 5000-8000 lines of device-specific code each.[3]: 378 Some shared services are common only to select personalities, such as MMPM serving multimedia only to Windows 3.1 and OS/2 personalities, and which is alien or redundant to other markets.[6]
Atop the shared services, another layer of userspace servers called personalities provideDOS,Windows,OS/2 (Workplace OS/2), andUNIX (WPIX) environments.[6] The further hope was to supportOS/400,AIX, Taligent OS, andMacOS personalities.[12] Personalities provide environment subsystems to applications.[11] Any one personality can be made dominant for a given version of the OS, providing the desktop user with a singleGUI environment to accommodate the secondary personalities. In 1993, IBM intended one release version to be based upon the OS/2 Workplace Shell[13] and another to be based upon the UNIXCommon Desktop Environment (CDE).[14]
IBM explained the branding: "Workplace OS is thecodename for a collection of operating system components including, among others, the IBM Microkernel and the OS/2 personality. Workplace OS/2 is the specific codename for the OS/2 personality. Workplace OS/2 will operate with the IBM Microkernel and can be considered OS/2 for the PowerPC."[15] For the 1995 final preview release, IBM continued, "When we stopped using the name 'Workplace' and started calling the product 'OS/2 for the PowerPC', you might have thought that the 'Workplace' was dead. But the 'Workplace' is far from dead. It has simply been renamed for prime time."[3]: 1, 375 Workplace OS/2 was intended to define the future of OS/2, as a 32-bit clean platform and free of internal legacy, with perfect compatibility for source code of OS/2 applications and drivers. IBM originally wanted to prove new development models on Workplace OS/2 and backport them into OS/2 2.1 for x86 until the two platforms were unified—especially the IBM Microkernel, a new graphics subsystem, fully 32-bit system code with aflat memory model,[16] Taligent, andOpenDoc.[17]
IBM intended for Workplace OS to run on several processor architectures, includingPowerPC,ARM, andx86[12][18]: 22 which would range in size from handheldPDAs[19][17] toworkstations to large 64-bit servers and supercomputers.[3] IBM saw the easy portability of the Workplace OS as creating a simple migration path to move its existing x86 (DOS and OS/2) customer base onto a new wave ofstandard reference PowerPC-based systems, such as thePC Power Series and thePower Macintosh. Creating a unique but open and industry-standard reference platform ofopen-source microkernel, IBM hedged its company-wide operating system strategy by aggressively attempting to recruit other operating system vendors to adopt its microkernel as a basis for their proprietary operating systems.
In January 1991, there was an internal presentation to the IBM Management Committee of a new strategy for operating system products. This included a chart called the Grand Unification Theory of Operating Systems (GUTS) which outlined how a singlemicrokernel underlying common subsystems could provide a single unifying architecture for the world's many existing and future operating systems. It was initially based in a procedural programming model, not object-oriented.[3]: 2–3 [18] The design elements of this plan had already been implemented on IBM'sRS/6000 platform via the System Object Model (SOM), a model which had already been delivered as integral to theOS/2 operating system.
Sometime later in 1991, as a result of the Apple/IBM business partnership, a small exploratory IBM team first visited the Taligent team, who demonstrated a relatively mature prototype operating system and programming model[3]: 3 based entirely on Apple's Pink project from 1987. There, GUTS's goals were greatly impacted and expanded by exposure to these similar goals—especially advanced in the areas of aggressiveobject-orientation, and of software frameworks upon a microkernel. IBM's optimistic team saw the Pink platform as being the current state of the art of operating system architecture. IBM wanted to adopt Pink's more object-oriented programming model and framework-based system design, and add compatibility with legacy procedural programming along with the major concept of multiple personalities of operating systems, to create the ultimate possible GUTS model.[3]: 4 [a]
GUTS defined [theoretical] operating system components similar to Taligent's [already existing] operating environment, only the components [in GUTS] were defined procedurally ... From the concept of shared services and Taligent's concept of object-oriented system frameworks, an object model evolved that representsthe new, faster, and more reliable way of building operating systems. What's more, because procedural and object-oriented components can coexist in a microkernel-based operating system, the evolution to a completely object-oriented world could be staged.[3]: 3–4
Through the historicAIM alliance, Apple's CEOJohn Sculley said that the already volume-shipping OS/2 and MacOS would become unified upon the common PowerPC hardware platform to "bring a renaissance to the industry".[20]
In late 1991, a small team from Boca Raton and Austin began implementing the GUTS project, with the goal of proving the GUTS concept, by first converting the monolithic OS/2 2.1 system to the Mach microkernel, and yielding a demo. To gain shared access to key personnel currently working on the existing OS/2, they disguised the project as the Joint Design Task Force and brought "a significant number" of personnel from Boca, Austin (with LANs and performance), Raleigh (withSNA and other transport services), IBM Research (with operating systems and performance), and Rochester (with the 64-bit, object-oriented worldview fromAS/400). Pleased with the robust, long-term mentality of the microkernel technology and with the progress of the project, the team produced a prototype in mid 1992.[3]: 4 [b][18] The initial internal-development prototypes ran on x86-based hardware and provided aBSD Unix derived personality and a DOS personality.[citation needed]
At Comdex in late 1992, the team flew in and assembled a private demonstration based on last-minute downloads to replace corrupted files and one hour of sleep. The presentation was so well received that the prototype was put on the trade show floor on Thursday, as the first public demonstration of the IBM Microkernel-based system running OS/2, DOS, 16-bit Windows, and UNIX applications.[3]: 4–5 [b][18] In 1992, IBM persuaded Taligent to migrate the Taligent OS from its internally developed microkernel named Opus, onto the IBM Microkernel.[8][10]: xiii [7] Ostensibly, this would have allowed Taligent's operating system (implemented as a Workplace OS personality) to execute side-by-side with DOS and OS/2 operating system personalities.[9]: 14–15
In 1993,InfoWorld reported that Jim Cannavino "has gone around the company and developer support for a plan to merge all of the company's computing platforms—ES/9000, AS/400, RS/6000, andPS/2—around a single set of technologies, namely the PowerPC microprocessor, the Workplace OS operating system, and the Taligent object model, along with a series of open standards for cross-platform development, network interoperability, etc."[21]: 5 On June 30, 1993, a presentation was given at the Boca Programming Center by Larry Loucks, IBM Fellow and VP of Software Architecture of the Personal Software Products (PSP) Division.[3]: 17
We have not closed discussion on [Mac OS support]. We're talking with Apple about including the Macintosh OS as one of the personalities in the microkernel.
By 1993, IBM reportedly planned two packages of Workplace OS, based on personality dominance: one based on the OS/2 Workplace Shell[13] and another based upon the UNIX Common Desktop Environment (CDE).[14] IBM and Apple were speaking about the possibility of a Mac OS personality.[12]
By January 1994, the IBM Power Personal Systems Division had still not yet begun testing its PowerPC hardware with any of its three intended launch operating systems: definitely AIX andWindows NT, and hopefully also Workplace OS.[22] Software demonstrations showed limited personality support, with the dominant one being the OS/2 Workplace Shell desktop, and the DOS and UNIX personalities achieving only fullscreen text mode support with crude hotkey switching between the environments.[14]Byte reported that the multiple personality support promised in Workplace OS's conceptual ambitions was more straightforward, foundational, and robust than that of the already-shipping Windows NT. The magazine said "IBM is pursuing multiple personalities, while Microsoft appears to be discarding them" while conceding that "it's easier to create a robust plan than a working operating system with robust implementations of multiple personalities".[14]
In 1994, the industry was reportedly shifting away from monolithic development and even application suites, toward object-oriented, component-based, crossplatform, application frameworks.[23]
By 1995, Workplace OS was becoming notable for its many and repeated launch delays, with IBM described as being inconsistent and "wishy washy" with dates. This left IBM's own PowerPC hardware products without a mainstream operating system, forcing the company to at least consider the rival Windows NT.[24][20] In April 1994,Byte reported that under lead architect Paul Giangarra,[14] IBM had staffed more than "400 people working to bring [Workplace OS] up on Power Personal hardware".[22]
In May 1994, the RISC Systems software division publicly announced IBM's first attempt to even study the feasibility of converting AIX into a Workplace OS personality, which the company had been publicly promising since the beginning. One IBM Research Fellow led a team of fewer than ten, to identify and address the problem. The team defined the AIX personality problem as being the fundamentally incompatiblebyte ordering between the big-endian AIX and thelittle-endian Workplace OS. This problem is endemic, because though the PowerPC CPU and Workplace OS can perform in either mode,[6] endianness is a systemwide configuration set once at boot time only; and Workplace OS favors OS/2 which comes from the little-endian Intelx86 architecture. After seven months of silence on the issue, IBM announced in January 1995 that the intractable endianness problem had resulted in the total abandonment of the flagship plan for an AIX personality.[18]: 19
In 1994, a proposal was made to reimplement OS/400 as a Workplace OS personality. This came at a point where the port of OS/400 to PowerPC was close to completion, but work to add 64-bit addressing and multiuser support to the IBM Microkernel had only begun.IBM Rochester ruled out delaying the PowerPC port to wait for Workplace OS to catch up, preferring a plan to incorporate the IBM Microkernel into the OS/400SLIC when it was ready, allowing Workplace OS personalities to run on top of OS/400. By late 1994, as Workplace OS became increasingly focused on OS/2, the Workplace OS team proposed a new plan known as "Harmony" — which would replace OS/400 by adding a compatibility layer to Workplace OS, and requiring new applications to target OS/2 APIs. This proposal was poorly received by IBM Rochester, who withdrew all support for Workplace OS soon after.[25]
In late 1994, as Workplace OS approached its first beta version, IBM referred to the beta product as "OS/2 for the PowerPC".[3]: 1 [15] As the project's first deliverable product, this first beta was released to select developers on the Power Series 440 in December 1994.[26] A second beta was released in 1995.[citation needed] By 1995, IBM had shipped two different releases of an application sampler CD for the beta OS.[27]
In mid 1995, IBM officially named its planned initial Workplace OS release "OS/2 Warp Connect (PowerPC Edition)"[3]: 1, 375 with thecodename "Falcon".[1] In October 1995, IBM announced the upcoming first release, though still a developer preview. The announcement predicted it to have version 1.0 of the IBM Microkernel with the OS/2 personality and a new UNIX personality, on PowerPC. Having been part of the earliest demonstrations, the UNIX personality was now intended to be offered to customers as a holdover due to the nonexistence of a long-awaited AIX personality, but the UNIX personality was also abandoned prior to release.[18]
This developer release is the first ever publication of Workplace OS, and of the IBM Microkernel (at version 1.0), which IBM's internal developers had been running privately on Intel and PowerPC hardware. Thegold master was produced on December 15, 1995 with availability on January 5, 1996,[1] only to existing Power Series hardware customers who paid $215[1] for a special product request through their IBM representative, who then relayed the request to the Austin research laboratory.[20] The software essentially appears to the user as the visually identical and source-compatible PowerPC equivalent of the mainstream OS/2 3.0 for Intel.[15][3]: 2 Packaged as two CDs with no box, its accompanying overview paper booklet calls it the "final edition"[28] but it is still a very incomplete product intended only for developers. Its installer only supports two computer models, theIBM PC Power Series 830 and 850 which havePowerPC 604 CPUs of100-120 MHz,16-196 MB of RAM, andIDE drives. Contrary to the product's "Connect" name, the installed operating system has no networking support. However, full networking functionality is described within the installed documentation files, and in the related bookIBM's Official OS/2 Warp Connect PowerPC Edition: Operating in the New Frontier (1995) — all of which the product's paper booklet warns the user to disregard. The kernel dumps debugging data to the serial console.[26][29] The system hosts nocompiler, so developers are required tocross-compile applications on thesource-compatible OS/2 for Intel system, using MetaWare’s High C compiler or VisualAge C++, and manually copy the files via relocatable medium to run them.[26]
With an officially concessionary attitude, IBM had no official plans for a general release packaged for OEMs or retail, beyond this developer preview available only via special order from the development lab. Upon its launch, Joe Stunkard, spokesman for IBM's Personal Systems Products division, said "When and if the Power market increases, we'll increase the operating system's presence as required."[20] On January 26, 1996, an Internet forum statement was made by John Soyring, IBM's Vice President of Personal Software Products: "We are not planning additional releases of the OS/2 Warp family on the PowerPC platform during 1996 — as wejust released in late December 1995 the OS/2 Warp (PowerPC Edition) product. ... We have just not announced future releases on the PowerPC platform. In no way should our announcement imply that we are backing away from the PowerPC."[30][1]
On November 22, 1995, IBM's developer newsletter said, "Another focus of the 1996 product strategy will be the IBM Microkernel and microkernel-based versions of OS/2 Warp. Nearly 20 corporations, universities, and research institutes worldwide have licensed the microkernel, laying the foundation for a completely open microkernel standard." IBM planned a second feature-parity release forx86 andPowerPC in 1996,[27] and version 2.0 of the microkernel was "distributed to microkernel adopters" early that year.[18]: 19 This version was described as final, with support for x86 and ARM processors.[18]: 22 IBM reportedly tested OS/2 on the never-released x86-compatiblePowerPC 615.[31]
At this point, the several-year future roadmap of Workplace OS included IBM Microkernel 2.0 and was intended to subsume the fully converged future of the OS/2 platform starting after the future release of OS/2 version 4, including ports toPentium,Pentium Pro,MIPS, ARM, andAlpha CPUs.[18]
The Workplace OS project was finally canceled in March 1996[32] due to myriad factors: inadequate performance; low acceptance of thePowerPC Reference Platform; poor quality of thePowerPC 620 launch; extensive cost overruns; lack of AIX, Windows, or OS/400 personalities; and the overall low customer demand. The only mainstream desktop operating system running on PowerPC was Windows NT, which also lacked supply and demand. Industry analysts said that "the industry may have passed by the PowerPC".[20] In 1996, IBM also closed the Power Personal Division responsible for personal PowerPC systems.[18] IBM stopped developing new operating systems, and instead committed heavily toLinux,Java, and someWindows. In 2012, IBM described Linux as the "universal platform".[33]
Reception was enthusiastically but skeptically mixed, as the young IT industry was already constantly grappling with thesecond-system effect, and was now presented with Workplace OS and PowerPC hardware as the ultimate second system duo to unify all preceding and future systems. On November 15, 1993,InfoWorld's concerns resembled theOsborne effect: "Now IBM needs to talk about this transition without also telling its customers to stop buying all the products it is already selling. Tough problem. Very little of the new platform that IBM is developing will be ready for mission-critical deployment until 1995 or 1996. So the company has to dance hard for two and maybe three years to keep already disaffected customers on board."[21]: 5
In 1994, an extensive analysis byByte reported that the multiple personality concept in Workplace OS's beta design was more straightforward, foundational, and robust than that of the already-shipping Windows NT. It said "IBM is pursuing multiple personalities, while Microsoft appears to be discarding them" and conceded that "it's easier to create a robust plan than a working operating system with robust implementations of multiple personalities".[14]
Upon the January 1996 developer final release,InfoWorld relayed the industry's dismay that the preceding two years of delays had made the platform "too little, too late", "stillborn", and effectively immediately discontinued. An analyst was quoted, "The customer base would not accept OS/2 and the PowerPC at the same time" because by the time IBM would eventually ship a final retail package of OS/2 on PowerPC machines, "the power/price ratio of the PowerPC processor just wasn't good enough to make customers accept all of the other drawbacks" of migrating to a new operating system alone.[20]
In 2013,Ars Technica retrospectively characterized the years of hype surrounding Workplace OS as supposedly being "the ultimate operating system, the OS to end all OSes ... It would run on every processor architecture under the sun, but it would mostly showcase the power of POWER. It would be all-singing and all-dancing."[8]
In January 1995, four years after the conception and one year before the cancellation of Workplace OS, IBM announced the results of a very late stage analysis of the project's initial assumptions. This concluded that it is impossible to unify the inherent disparity in endianness between different proposed personalities of legacy systems, resulting in the total abandonment of the flagship plan for an AIX personality.[18]: 19
In May 1997, one year after its cancellation, one of its architects reflected back on the intractable problems of the project's software design and the limits of available hardware.
There is no good way to factor multiple existing systems into a set of functional servers without making them excessively large and complex. In addition, the message-passing nature of the microkernel turns out to be a poor match for the characteristics of modern processors, causing performance problems. Finally, the use of fine-grained objects complicated the design and further reduced the performance of the system. Based on this experience, I believe that more modest, more targeted operating systems consume fewer resources, offer better performance and can provide the desired semantics with fewer compromises.
— Freeman L. Rawson III, Workplace OS architect, IBM Austin, May 1997[32]
In September 1997, a case study of the history of the development of Workplace OS was published by theUniversity of California with key details having been verified by IBM personnel. These researchers concluded that IBM had relied throughout the project's history upon multiple false assumptions and overly grandiose ambitions, and had failed to apprehend the inherent difficulty of implementing a kernel with multiple personalities. IBM considered the system mainly as its constituent components and not as a whole, in terms of system performance, system design, and corporate personnel organization.[18]: 22 IBM had not properly researched and proven the concept of generalizing all these operating system personalities before starting the project, or at any responsible timeframe during it — especially its own flagship AIX.[18]: 21 IBM assumed that all the resultant performance issues would be mitigated by eventual deployment upon PowerPC hardware.[18]: 22 The Workplace OS product suffered thesecond-system effect, includingfeature creep, with thousands of global contributing engineers across many disparate business units nationwide.[18]: 21 The Workplace OS project had spent four years and $2 billion (or 0.6% of IBM's revenue for that period), which the report described as "one of the most significant operating systems software investments of all time" and "one of the largest operating system failures in modern times".[18]: 22
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of July 2025 (link)| Developers |
|  | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Major versions | ||||||
| Components | ||||||
| Technology and concepts | ||||||
| Successors | ||||||
| See also | ||||||
| Supercomputer | |
|---|---|
| Server,mainframe | |
| Desktop,workstation | |
| Point of sale | |
| Projects | |
| Related | |
| Kernels |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operating systems |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Frameworks,kits | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Developers | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
