Early RPC & the Alto

Readings

• Thacker et al., "Alto: A Personal computer" (1979)

Read this to learn about the Alto, the distributed computing system that pioneered the core technology of current computers.

• Bruce J. Nelson, Remote Procedure Call (1981):

You only need to read the thesis summary which starts at page 224 in the PDF. If you have time, however, I'd suggest looking at the rest, particularly the introduction and related work.

• Birrell & Nelson, "Implementing Remote Procedure Calls" (1984)

Compare the perspective of this RPC implementation description with the more design-oriented focus of Nelson's thesis.