About the seminar

50 years ago, ICL introduced its “New Range” and with it, the VME (Virtual Machine Environment) Operating System. VME has gone through considerable changes over its life, both in terms of the architecture and implementation. Today’s session will cover the evolution of the architecture and how the implementation moved from proprietary to commodity while sustaining VME applications.

About the speaker

Kevin Hughes joined ICL (now Fujitsu) in 1979, working on 1900 emulation on 2900 series systems. He moved from Bracknell to Manchester in 1982 to join the Distributed Mainframe division, developing microcode for ME29 emulation on Series 39. Kevin worked on development routes and methodologies during the late 1980s, predominantly for IO systems, while continuing working on processor and system design & development. In the early 1990s he was a designer on the SY system and specialised in performance modelling. He championed the exploitation of emerging and commodity technologies to provide platforms for the VME operating systems and applications. He continued driving the move away from proprietary technology through the early 2000s and culminated in the development of the AppEx environment.

Kevin was made an ICL Distinguished Engineer in 1996 and was made a Fujitsu Fellow in 2014 and having retired in 2022 is now a Fellow Emeritus.

Zoom

The meeting can be accessed on Zoom at https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85676063227?pwd=dCLeHQyH97eShkCbohTZgeaNdkzY6R.1 .