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Atlas Architecture
The Architecture
The main parts of Atlas 1 consist of:-
- The control unit: responsible for pipelined instruction decoding and initiating the relevant action
- Floating Point Aritmetic Unit: for all floating point arithmetic operations
- Integer Aritmetic Unit: for all integer and character operations
- The Supervisor: schedules the running of jobs and switching as necessary. Atlas was probably the first machine whoce control program warranted being called an operating system.
- The storage system: programs could address a million words of store which either resided in main memory or on drums. The Supervisor made this appear like a 1-level storage system by paging blocks of information in and out of main store.
- Input and output devices: the main backing store was either 1 inch Ampex pre-formatted tape or a fixed disc. Compatible IBM 7-track magnetic tape decks were also available.
The following diagram shows the component parts of Atlas 1:-