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◈ALB Atlas

Ferranti Atlas Dead

Ferranti Atlas
KindMachine
Introduced1962
Discontinued1971
StatusDead
ManufacturerManchester / Ferranti
ClassMainframe
PlatformTransistors, virtual memory
Sourcewww.chilton-computing.org.uk ↗

The machine that invented virtual memory and the supervisor — for a moment the most powerful computer on Earth. The one-level store idea is now inside every CPU.

Created by Ferranti

Kilburn's Manchester team, commercialized by Ferranti, shipped Atlas in 1962 — transistorized, and for a while the most powerful computer in the world. Its one-level store (paging between core and drum) invented virtual memory; the 'Supervisor' program invented the OS kernel.

Extracodes (hardware-intercepted function calls) were the first syscall-like mechanism. The Atlas Supervisor is arguably the ancestor of every kernel since.

→ Read the full article on the ALB Wiki

Sources

  1. chilton-computing.org.uk/acl/
  2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_(computer)