A GE Management review took place at the end of 1967 and it was decided that the Bull Charlie study should be the base of a modern GE product line essentially targeted to replace GE-100 and GE-400 product lines.
This product line should have been designed jointly by GEISI, Bull and the GE400 team of Phoenix. The GE600 team of Phoenix was then busy to fix design and implementation problems in both the GCOS3 and the MULTICS systems and was let apart of the new design. ASTO research center in Phoenix, directed by John WEIL and Mauro PACELLI, was to be deeply involved in the project.
It was decided to review the options of the Bull study (projet Charlie) and to launch a project called L178 product line composed of three models:
A strict security system, à la IBM, was instituted for the new design. Code names were formed from the initials of the project manager and documents were classified as GE class4 for all business planning and financially sensitive matters and class3 for technical matters. Class4 documents received a number for each page and they were distributed according a centralized and nominative list of distribution. Class3 documents were distributed according "need to know" lists of distribution. It seems that no leak to the press or to the outside occurred during this part of the design phase.
The project was started early in 1968 under the effective direction of Eugen R. WHITE as a project manager reporting directly to J.HAANSTRA.
A coordination team was assembled in Phoenix;
the chief architect was Georges LEPICARD from Bull,
the software project leader was Leroy ELLISON from GE
Some Bull hardware architects from BULL --G.BARONNAT and G.de PONCINS, joined the Phoenix team for almost one year.
Specific program managers were assigned in the different organizations to coordinate local work and to report to theoverall program manager. Jean-Pierre HARDY was program manager for the R370 to be developed by Paris.
The architecture was coordinated by George LEPICARD and discussed between the CPU architects, the compilers designers of ASTO and the Paris software people for the kernel (then called nucleus) requirements. The first draft of the "Interior decor" –this word was coined at this time by ASTO software people– was published by September 1968.