NonStop
Product Family
NonStop is a range of fault-tolerant hardware platforms, and operating systems, developed by Tandem (later acquired by Compaq, absorbed into Hewlett-Packard, and then, further span into Hewlett Packard Enterprise).
It comprises of multiple generations of systems, based on MIPS, Itanium, and x86 ISAs, and a combination of proprietary, and standard components, and firmware, supporting hot-swapping of hardware modules, and graceful degradation of them.
NonStop Kernel
TODO : Guardian, OSS environments, file formats, big endian x86
Guardian Environment
Common Run-Time Environment (CRE)
The CRE is a library that provides provides API, and ABI interoperability, between the C/C++, COBOL, and FORTRAN runtime environments, and can be accessed in both the Guardian, and OSS environments.
Open System Services (OSS) Environment
OSS is an optional subsystem, derived from OSF/1 source code (primarily several revisions of OSF/1 1.3, with some components from OSF/1 1.2), that implements a UNIX compatibility environment.
Recent versions include header files, and utilities from LLVM, that have been modified, to also interoperate with the Guardian environment, and implement compatibility with DinkumWare ABIs, as well as a large amount of RogueWave's C Standard Library implementation.
Some libraries were developed by Encore Computer Corporation, and others were imported from upstream BSD UNIX, and Carnegie-Mellon University's Mach implementation, via OSF/1.
Development Environment
TODO : Relationship with OSF/1, toolchains - COBOL/C/C++ At least one version of the NonStop Development Environment, for Windows, which includes cross-compilers, for COBOL, and C/C++ has been found.
NonStop-UX
NonStop-UX was a variant of UNIX, developed by Tandem, containing AT&T System V, and 4.3BSD components. Ports are known to exist, for MIPS-based systems.
It doesn't seem to be directly derived from NonStop Kernel, and doesn't contain technology from OSF/1, in the base operating system. It does, however, have a port of OSF/Motif available, as an optional package.
Like NonStop Kernel, it uses ELF, as its primary executable format, and file typically identifies executables as ELF 32-bit MSB executable, MIPS, MIPS-I version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /usr/lib/libc.so.1, stripped
Variants
TNS/X
Executables for the x86-64 variant are usually identified as ELF 64-bit MSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (HP NonStop Kernel), dynamically linked, with debug_info, not stripped), by the file utility.
These systems are unique, in that that NonStop Kernel always runs in a big endian mode, despite the underlying CPU being little endian.
TNS/E
Executables for the Itanium variant are usually described as ELF 64-bit MSB IA-64, version 1 (HP NonStop Kernel), by the file utility.
These machines boot using EFI, and can boot from an El Torito-compliant ISO 9660 volume, such as the HPI Loader, and Halted States SVCS NS1000FWV1 Update 1 (542908-002) disc, that has been archived.
TNS/R
Executables for the MIPS variant are usually described as ELF 32-bit MSB MIPS, MIPS-I version 1 (SYSV)), by the file utility.