![]() The first one at Manchester University was the prototype. Simon Lavington was associated with Atlas from September 1962 until it closed down, first as a research student and then as a lecturer responsible for a special on-line A/D/A Converter which was used by Atlas for the digital analysis of analogue signals, particularly speech waveforms. Thanks to Simon Lavington and his website article The Atlas Story for the infomation on peripheral devices, who also mentions that prehaps the most important aspect of the Atlas design was the use of Virtual Memory – a concept still at the fundamental level of all computers today. Slow paper tape punches (110 chars/sec) (4).Fast paper tape punches (300 chars/sec) (1).Slow paper-tape readers (300 chars/sec) (4). ![]() Fast paper-tape readers (1,000 chars/sec) (1). ![]() Atlas’s rich interrupt structure and the embedding of peripheral-handling routines in a fast read-only memory with special associated control registers meant that the Atlas Supervisor (Operating System) could handle a respectable number of devices These included (numbers indicate quantity in the Manchester Atlas): 600,000 additions per second, it was considerably faster than our ICT 1301’s 11,000 calculations per minute – roughly 3,200 times faster.Ĭompared with its contemporaries, Atlas catered for a large number of peripheral devices. ![]() This print-out was one of several copies printed out right before the power switch was turned off for the last time on the 30th September 1971.Ītlas was considered to be one of the world’s first Supercomputers, and at the time of its construction in 1962, was the fastest of them all. We do however have one of the last print-outs the Atlas computer at Manchester University ever did. No, we don’t really have an Atlas computer. ![]()
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