1981

VAX Information Architecture was designed to help communication between VAX/VMS software products. As it can be seen on the picture to the left, it integrated database management systems, languages and data processing systems into one unit, in which each component is able to reach any other components via well-defined library calls.

Not "official" DEC-VAXen, but still part of the history: the multiprocessor 11/780 systems built at Purdue University. It started when George Goble (the man with the key on the picture) and his collegues discovered that another CPU can be connected to the bus, if they remove the SBI terminators. As it turned out, it wasn't that easy, but after a while, they had a working AMP (assymetric multiprocessing) system. The process was then explained at a DECUS meeting, so from that point on everyone was able to "roll his own" two-processor VAX. The same team then wrote the first multiprocessor UNIX-implementation too. The photo depicts the shutdown of the last two-processor machine at Purdue.

Other DEC machines: The PDP-11/2[34]  and the PDP-8-based DECmate I were introduced in that year.