Dave Cutler
Dave Cutler, Sr. (born March 13, 1942) is a noted software engineer, designer and developer of several operating systems including the RSX-11, VMS and VAXELN systems of Digital Equipment Corporation and Windows NT from Microsoft.
Personal History
He was born in Lansing, Michigan and grew up in Dewitt, Michigan. After graduating from Olivet College in 1965, Cutler went to work for DuPont. One of his tasks was developing and running computer simulations on Digital machines. He developed an interest in operating systems and left DuPont to pursue that interest.
Cutler's software career started at a small company he founded, located in Monument Square, Concord, Massachusetts, marketing software for the LINC and PDP-8 computers.
Cutler holds over 20 patents and is an affiliate professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Washington.
David Cutler usefully summarised his own career in the to Inside Windows NT, quoted on .
Cutler is featured prominently in the book, , which chronicles how the first version of NT was developed at Microsoft. It was written by G. Pascal Zachary.
In addition to his engineering skills, Cutler is known for his sardonic humor. He generally referred to the RSX 1975, DIGITAL began a hardware project, code named Star, to design on a 32-bit virtual address extension to its PDP-11. In June, 1975, Dave together with Dick Hustvedt, and Peter Lipman where appointed the technical project leaders for the software project, code named Starlet, to develop a totally new operating system for the Star family of processors. These two projects were tightly integrated from the beginning. The three technical leaders of the Starlet project together with three technical leaders of the Star project formed the "Blue Ribbon Committee" at DIGITAL who produced the fifth design evolution for the programs. The design featured simplifications to the memory management and process scheduling schemes of the earlier proposals and the architecture was accepted. The Star and Starlet projects culminated in the development the VAX 11/780 computer and the VAX/VMS operating system.
Prism and Emerald Projects
DIGITAL began working on RISC technology in 1986 and Cutler, who was then working in DEC's Seattle facility, was tapped to head the program, code named Prism, to develop the company’s RISC machine. Its operating system, code named Emerald, would embody the next generation of design principles and have a compatibility layer for UNIX and VMS. The RISC machine was to be based on ECL technology and was one of three ECL projects DIGITAL was undertaking at the time. On the basis of the R&D cost involved in funding multiple ECL projects to yield products which would ultimately compete against each other, Prism was cancelled in 1998 in favor of a systems runing Ultrix on processors produced by MIPS. (The VAX 9000 was the only ECL project to survive to market).
Windows NT
Cutler left Digital and joined Microsoft in 1988 and became co-leader of the team that developed Windows NT. Later he worked on targeting Windows NT to the 64-bit Alpha computer (ironic, given the fate of the projects to port VMS to IA32!) According to Microsoft's website, Cutler is (as of September 24, 2002) working on the 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows.
Quotation
- "VMS and its RSX ancestors all the way back to IAS, I believe, have had a FoRK Queue, the source of at least 3% of Internals humor." .
- "I have many fond memories of how RSX-11M took shape, I had a rubber stamp made that proclaimed 'Size Is the Goal' and proceeded to stamp every last bit of correspondence to make sure that all the programmers and project managers understood" -- David Cutler
- "Little did I know that I would be fortunate enough to develop several operating systems in my lifetime; developing one is a rare opportunity for anyone." -- David Cutler
