Skip to content
◈ALB Atlas

IBM System/360 Dead

IBM System/360
KindMachine
Introduced1964
Discontinued1978
StatusDead
ManufacturerIBM
ClassMainframe
Platform32-bit, compatible family
Sourcebitsavers.org ↗

The five-billion-dollar bet that won — one architecture, small to large, binary compatible. It defined mainframe computing and its descendants still run z/OS today.

Created by IBM
Hosted OS/360 CP-67/CMS MVS

IBM's $5 billion bet (1964) — five compatible models across a 50:1 performance range, the first commercial architecture designed as a family. Gerrit Blaauw, Fred Brooks, and Gene Amdahl led the architecture; Brooks's book about managing its software became The Mythical Man-Month.

The 360 created the modern notions of computer architecture, backward compatibility, and the 8-bit byte. Its descendants — System/370, 390, zSeries, IBM Z — still run 360 binaries.

Sources

  1. bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/
  2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/360