Multics - Retrospective Observations

Retrospective Observations

The permanently resident kernel of this powerful multiprocessor mainframe computing utility, much derided in its day as being too large and complex, was only 135 KiB of code. The first MIT GE-645 had 512 kilowords of memory (2 MiB), a truly enormous amount at the time, and the kernel only used a moderate portion of Multics main memory.

The entire system, including the operating system and the complex PL/1 compiler, user commands, and subroutine libraries, consisted of about 1500 source modules. These averaged roughly 200 lines of source code each, and compiled to produce a total of roughly 4.5 MiB of procedure code, which was fairly large by the standards of the day.

Multics compilers generally optimised more for code density than CPU performance, for example using small sub-routines called operators for short standard code-sequences, making direct comparison of object code size with more modern systems less useful. High code density was a good optimisation choice for a multi-user system with expensive main memory, such as Multics.