Decentralized Computing Technology for Fault-Tolerant, Survivable C3I systems. Volume 2
J. Duane Northcutt, E. Douglas Jensen, Edward J. Burke, Raymond K. Clark, James G. Hanko · Final Report · 1990
Abstract : Alpha is an operating system for the mission-critical integration and operation of large, complex, distributed, real time systems. Such systems are becoming increasingly common in both military (e.g., BM/C3, combat platform management) and industrial factory and plant automation (e.g., automobile manufacturing) contexts. They differ substantially from the better-known timesharing systems, numerically-oriented supercomputers, and networks of personal workstations. More surprisingly, they also depart significantly from traditional real-time systems, which are predominately for low-level periodic sampled data monitoring and control.