Data Processing Date January 30, 1979 Division _P_R_O_G_R_A_M_M_I_N_G A_N_N_O_U_N_C_E_M_E_N_T_ NEW OPERATING SYSTEM Because so many users have asked for an operating system of even greater capability than VM, IBM announces the Virtual Universe Operating System - OS/VU. Running under OS/VU, the individual user appears to have not merely a machine of his own, but an entire universe of his own, in which he can set up and take down his own programs, data sets, systems networks, personnel, and planetary systems. He need only specify the universe he desires, and the OS/VU system generation program (IEHGOD) does the rest. This program will reside in SYS1.GODLIB. The minimum time for this function is 6 days of activity and 1 day of review. In conjunction with OS/VU, all system utilities have been replaced by one program (IEHPROPHET) which will reside in SYS1.MESSIAH. This program has no parms or control cards as it knows what you want to do when it is executed. Naturally, the user must have attained a certain degree of sophistication in the data processing field if an efficient utilization of OS/VU is to be achieved. Frequent calls to nonresident galaxies, for instance, can lead to unexpected delays in the execution of a job. Although IBM, through its wholly-owned subsidiary, The United States, is working on a program to upgrade the speed of light and thus reduce the overhead of extraterrestrial and metadimensional paging, users must be careful for the present to stay within the laws of physics. IBM must charge an additional fee for violations. OS/VU will run on any IBM x0xx equipped with Extended WARP Feature. Rental is twenty million dollars per cpu/nanosecond. Users should be aware that IBM plans to migrate all existing systems and hardware to OS/VU as soon as our engineers effect one output that is (conceptually) error-free. This will give us a base to develop an even more powerful operating system, target date 2001, designated "Virtual Reality". OS/VR is planned to enable the user to migrate to totally unreal universes. To aid the user in identifying the difference between "Virtual Reality" and "Real Reality", a file containing a linear arrangement of multisensory total records of successive moments of now will be established. It's name will be SYS1.est. For more information, contact your IBM data processing representative. International Business Machines Corporation 1133 Westchester Avenue White Plains, New York 10004 IIIII BBBB M M I B B MM MM I BBBB M M M I B B M M IIIII BBBB M M New Updates and Fixes to IBM/VU This is a notification of two patches to IBM/VU (Virtual Universe) and a new release designed for users not requiring the full capibilities of a virtual universe. Several users have reported errors resulting from recursive calls to the Universe Creation Utility (UCU). This utility, called from IEBSAGAN, is used to initialize the virtual space which will hold the universe to be simulated. On occasion, the universe created by this routine will contain technologies capable of creating their 'own' virtual universe processors, which in turn call on the UCU. While the stack structure supporting the UCU was designed with this in mind, no system can handle unlimited recursion. Release 134 will contain a patch that will request user verification before a new level is created. Another problem that has been experienced occurs during the use of black holes and neutron stars in the virtual universe. Although the mass storage media provided with the VU processor is of the highest quality, it can not handle storage at such a density. The highest density that is supported is 2.32E16 grams/cc. DO NOT EXCEED THIS LIMIT. Severe gravitaional effects have serious impact on the reliability of the system. V134 will also contain a program (IEBFORWARD) that can deal with these problems. Due for release in April is IBM/VSS (Virtual Solar System). This is designed for the casual user, who does not require the full use of a universe. One possible use of this package is to provide uniform testing conditions for programs that take input regarding the phase of the moon. In addition, it is estimated that the cost of simulating the solar system and a Voyager flyby is 1/5 that of actually running such a mission. IBM Software Division