Overview
Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993, and it lives on today since the latest version of Windows, 11, includes its technology.
The Windows NT name denotes major technology advancements that it introduced to the Windows product line including eliminating the 16-bit memory access limitations of earlier Windows releases. Each Windows release that includes its technology is considered to be based on, if not a revision of, Windows NT even though the Windows NT name has not been used since 1996.
Windows NT provides many features including:
multiprocessing
multi-user
pure 32-bit memory access — earlier, consumer-oriented versions, Windows 3.1x and Windows 9x, were 16-bit/32-bit hybrids
Multi-architecture support — initially instruction set architectures including IA-32, MIPS, and DEC Alpha; support for PowerPC, Itanium, x64, and ARM were added later and later still: x86 (including IA-32 and x64) and ARM
Many system services including: Windows shell, Windows API, Native API, Active Directory, Group Policy, Hardware Abstraction Layer, NTFS, BitLocker, Windows Store, Windows Update, and Hyper-V.