Control Program Facility

Control Program Facility (CPF) was the operating system for the IBM System/38. CPF is not related to SSP.

Control Program Facility (CPF)
DeveloperIBM
Initial release1978 (1978)
PlatformsIBM System/38 minicomputer
Default user interfaceCommand-line interface
LicenseProprietary

Overview

A database management system was integrated with the operating system.

The System/38's advanced operating system lives on with IBM's AS/400. Great efforts were made by IBM to enable programs originally written for the System/34 and /36 to be moved to the AS/400.

Description of the libraries
  • QGPL – general purpose library
  • QSYS – system library
  • QSPL – spooling library
  • QTEMP – temporary library
  • QSRV – system service library
  • QRECOVERY – system recovery library

Data storage

In most computers prior to the System/38, and most modern ones, data stored on disk was stored in separate logical files. When data was added to a file it was written in the sector dedicated to this, or if the sector was full, on a new sector somewhere else.

The System/38 adopted the single-level store architecture, where main storage and disk storage are organized as one, from the abandoned IBM Future Systems project (FS).[1] Every piece of data was stored separately and could be put anywhere on the system. There was no such thing as a physically contiguous file on disk, and the operating system managed the storage and recall of all data elements.

Capability-based addressing

System/38 was one of the few commercial computers with capability-based addressing. (The earlier Plessey 250 was one of the few other computers with capability architecture ever sold commercially.) Capability-based addressing was removed in the follow-on AS/400 and iSeries models.[2] Capability-based operating system refers to an operating system that uses capability-based security.

gollark: The technology is unusable outside of the furnaces because when you "research" things, you just confuse the AI of your crashed ship into giving you the ability to manufacture them, without ever actually understanding it.
gollark: Perhaps it electrolyzes water vapour. Perhaps it's able to fuse oxygen/nitrogen.
gollark: The power requirement it has is just to run the electromagnetic containment.
gollark: The power requirements might be prohibitive, but I suppose it could contain a fusion reactor too.
gollark: Or it comes from nanoscale biter corposes.

References
  1. Mark Smotherman. "IBM Future System (FS) - 1970s". Retrieved October 11, 2017.
  2. Soltis, Frank G. (July 2001). Fortress Rochester: The Inside Story of the IBM ISeries. 29th Street Press. p. 119. ISBN 978-1-58304-083-6..
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