HP Multi-Programming Executive

MPE (Multi-Programming Executive) is a discontinued business-oriented mainframe computer real-time operating system developed by Hewlett-Packard for their HP 3000 computers. While the HP 3000s were initially mini-mainframes, the final high-end systems supported 12 CPUs and over 2000 simultaneous users.

It runs on the HP 3000 family of computers, which originally used HP custom 16-bit stack architecture CISC CPUs and were later migrated to PA-RISC where the operating system was called MPE XL.^[1]

In 1983, the original version of MPE was written in a language called SPL (System Programming Language). MPE XL was written primarily in Pascal, with some assembly language and some of the old SPL code.^{[citation needed]}

In 1992, the OS name was changed to MPE/iX to indicate Unix interoperability with the addition of POSIX compatibility.^[2] The discontinuance of the product line was announced in late 2001, with support from HP terminating at the end of 2010. A number of 3rd party companies still support both the hardware and software.^{[citation needed]}

In 2002 HP released the last version MPE/iX 7.5.^[3]

Among others, MPE/iX supports the following list of common commands and programs.^[4]

• Official website at the Wayback Machine (archived 2005-03-12)
• Allegro Consultants, Inc. Free HP 3000 Software, MPE Software Support
• Beechglen Development Inc. MPE Software Support Archived 1996-12-27 at the Wayback Machine
• HP MPE/iX homepage
• HP MPE/iX Command reference
• openMPE at the Wayback Machine (archived 2018-08-23) Advocates of continued MPE and IMAGE source code access beyond 2010
• "Collection Listings (Documents)". HP Computer Museum. Search for headings 3000, MPE V Operating System, MPE/XL MPE/iX

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