Family Trees
The 600/6000-series architecture of GE/Honeywell/Bull—and licensed compatibles from Toshiba and NEC—dates back nearly 70 years, to the 1959 MISTRAM (Missile Trajectory Measurement) project and the M235 computer, designed by a team lead by John Couleur of General Electric’s Heavy Military Electronics Department. By 1959, GE’s computer division was already well-established, having secured the contract to produce Bank of America’s ERMA (Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting) technology in 1956.
It was not corporate ambition but practical financial considerations that were the primary motivator to create a new large-scale computer platform and its associated software. As GE’s internal dependence on large computers increased dramatically in the late 1950s and early 1960s, so did the costs of leasing and purchasing mainframe hardware (mostly IBM’s 700/7000-series), making the development of what became known as the 600-series (and later, 6000-series) a cost-effective business decision.
The platform endures—primarily as a legacy system—with compatible solutions continuing to be offered by Atos and Eviden, making the venerable 600/6000-series the world’s longest-lived system architecture.
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The following “family tree” is our attempt to visually depict the complete evolution of the 600/6000-series hardware platform from its inception to the present day.
It does not include various related systems using different architectures (i.e. GE-400, Level-6, Level-64). It is also not meant as a comprehensive list of every model, but rather to illustrate the evolution of the series over time, highlighting the major advancements.
The DPS8M Simulator, as the name implies, is primarily focused on the Multics-capable branch of the family (encompassing the GE-645, 6180, Level‑68, and DPS‑8/M), but the series hosted other operating systems.
While the simulator is only known to run Multics at present, the 600/6000-series commercially supported at least five other offerings: GCOS III, GCOS-8, CP-6, DTSS, and the Mark III time sharing system, which later provided the infrastructure for the GEnie (and AppleLink) online services.
Beyond the mainstream software offerings above, special militarized and embedded variants of the platform existed for critical real-time applications in the defense, process control, aerospace, and maritime sectors.