Dave Cutler

David Neil Cutler, Sr. (born March 13, 1942) is an, designer and developer of several operating systems including the ,  and  systems of Digital Equipment Corporation and Windows NT of Microsoft.

Personal history
David Cutler was born in and grew up in. After graduating from in 1965, Cutler went to work for. One of his tasks was developing and running s 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 called Agrippa-Ord, located in Monument Square, Concord, Massachusetts (or possibly in Acton, 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 foreword to Inside Windows NT.

In addition to his engineering skills, Cutler is known for his sardonic humor. He generally referred to the RSX fork list as the "fork queue" Sometimes even his error messages turn out to have a double meaning.

David is also an avid auto racing driver. He has previously competed in the Atlantic Championship from 1996 to 2002, scoring a career best of 8th on the Milwaukee Mile in 2000.

VMS
In April 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 Lippman were 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 of the VAX-11/780 superminicomputer and the VAX/VMS operating system, respectively.

At DEC he is widely credited with having terminated the 1979-80 Desktop RSTS project and scrapping the manufacturing prototype. Compared to the subsequently announced IBM-PC, RSTS had 40,000 running applications, ANSI languages, and a DBMS. RSTS had a reputation as a robust, stable and reliable multi-user, multi-tasking operating system. RSTS also had a virtual operating mode that allowed it to faithfully emulate other operating systems such as RSX-11M and RT11.

He was also known for his disdain for all things UNIX. His sardonic nature showed through in the VMS v UNIX debates at DEC in the early 1980s. He would often show his low opinion by referring to the UNIX process I/O model by reciting "getta byte, getta byte, getta byte byte byte" to the rhythm of the "cavalry charge" finale of Rossini's William Tell Overture (made popular as the theme music for the Lone Ranger TV series).

Prism and Mica projects
DIGITAL began working on RISC technology in 1986 and Cutler, who was then working in DEC's DECWest facility in Bellevue, Washington, was elected to head Prism, a project to develop the company’s RISC machine. Its operating system, code named Mica, was to 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.

Funding the R&D costs of multiple ECL projects yielding products that would ultimately compete against each other was a strain. Of the three ECL projects, the VAX 9000 was the only one that was directly commercialized. Primarily because of the early successes of the PMAX advanced development project and the need for differing business models, Prism was canceled in 1988 in favor of PMAX.

Prism later surfaced as the basis of DEC's Alpha family of computer systems.

Windows NT
Cutler left Digital for Microsoft in October 1988 and led the development of Windows NT. Later, he worked on targeting Windows NT to Digital's 64-bit Alpha architecture (itself based on the Prism design), then on Windows 2000. After the demise of Windows on Alpha (and the demise of DEC), Cutler was instrumental in porting Windows to AMD's new 64-bit AMD64 architecture. He was officially involved with the Windows XP Pro 64-bit and Windows Server 2003 SP1 64-bit releases, as well as Windows Vista. He moved to working on Microsoft's Live Platform in August 2006. Dave Cutler was awarded the prestigious status of Technical Fellow at Microsoft.

Windows Azure
At the 2008 Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft announced Azure Services Platform, a cloud-based operating system which Microsoft is developing. During the conference keynote, Cutler was mentioned as a lead developer on the project, along with Amitabh Srivastava.

Awards

 * Recognized among 2007 National Medal of Technology and Innovation Laureates, announced August 25, 2008 and which were awarded on September 29 in a White House ceremony.