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Microsoft Windows NT

(Redirected from Windows NT)

Microsoft Windows NT is an operating system produced by Microsoft Corporation. It is the ancestor of their current flagship Windows XP.

When development started in 1988, Windows NT was to be known as OS/2 3.0, the third version of the operating system developed jointly by Microsoft and IBM. In addition to working on three versions of OS/2, Microsoft continued parallel development of the DOS-based and less resource-demanding Windows environment. When Windows 3.0 was released in May 1990, it was so successful that Microsoft decided to change the primary application programming interface for the still-unreleased NT OS/2 (as it was then known) from an extended OS/2 API to an extended Windows API. This decision caused tension between Microsoft and IBM, and the collaboration ultimately fell apart. IBM continued OS/2 development alone, while Microsoft continued work on the newly-renamed Windows NT. Windows NT would be far more successful than OS/2, due largely to Microsoft's market prowess.

Microsoft hired a group of developers from Digital Equipment Corporation led by Dave Cutler to build Windows NT, and many elements reflect earlier DEC experience with VMS and RSX-11. The OS is designed to run on multiple instruction set architectures, with the kernel separated from the hardware by a hardware abstraction layer. APIs are implemented as subsystems atop the publicly undocumented Native API; it was this that allowed the late adoption of the Windows API. Originally a microkernel design, subsequent releases have integrated more functions into the kernel for better performance. Windows NT was the first operating system to use Unicode internally.

The following are the major releases of Windows NT:

Version Editions Released
Windows NT 3.1 Workstation, Advanced Server 1993
Windows NT 3.5 Workstation, Server 1994
Windows NT 3.51 Workstation, Server 1995
Windows NT 4.0 Workstation, Server, Terminal Server 1996
Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) Professional, Server, Advanced Server, Datacenter Server 2000
Windows XP (NT 5.1) Home, Professional, Media Center, Tablet PC, Starter, Embedded, 64-Bit 2001
Windows Server 2003 (NT 5.2) Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, Web 2003


The first release was given version number 3.1 to match the contemporary 16-bit Windows; magazines of that era claimed the number was also used to make that version seem more reliable than a ".0" release. It is popularly believed that Dave Cutler intended the initialism "WNT" as a pun on VMS, incrementing each letter by one; while this would have suited Cutler's humor, the project's earlier name of NT OS/2 belies this theory. Another of the original OS/2 3.0 developers, Mark Lucovsky, states that the name was taken from the Intel i860 processor—code-named "N-Ten"—which served as the original target hardware. Various Microsoft publications expand NT to "New Technology", but officially the letters stand for nothing. The letters were dropped from the name of Windows 2000 to reflect Microsoft's intent to unify its home and business lines, then represented by Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0, but this goal would not be achieved until the introduction of Windows XP.

Windows NT 3.1 ran on Intel IA-32, DEC Alpha, MIPS R4000, and PowerPC processors; Intergraph Corporation ported Windows NT to its Clipper architecture and later SPARC, but neither version was sold to the public. Windows NT 4.0 was the last major release to support Alpha, MIPS, or PowerPC, though development of Windows 2000 for Alpha continued until 1999, when Compaq stopped support for Windows NT on that architecture. Windows XP 64-Bit, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise, and Windows Server 2003 Datacenter support Intel's IA-64 processors. As of September 2004, Microsoft had published beta releases of three editions for the AMD64: Windows XP Professional x64, Windows Server 2003 Standard x64, and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64.


See also

Microsoft Windows


History of Microsoft Windows
Windows: 1.0 | 2.0 | 3.x | NT | 95 | 98 | Me | 2000 | XP | Server 2003 | CE | PPC | WM | Longhorn | Blackcomb


External links


Last updated: 10-24-2004 05:10:45