The Atlas Supervisor was the program which managed the allocation of processing resources of
Manchester University's Atlas Computer so that the machine was able to act on
many tasks and
user programs concurrently.
Its various functions included running the Atlas computer's
virtual memory
In computing, virtual memory, or virtual storage is a memory management technique that provides an "idealized abstraction of the storage resources that are actually available on a given machine" which "creates the illusion to users of a very ...
(Atlas Supervisor paper, section 3, Store Organisation) and is ‘considered by many to be the first recognisable modern
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...
’.
Brinch Hansen described it as "the most significant breakthrough in the history of operating systems."
References
;Notes
;Bibliography
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External links
The Atlas Supervisor paper (T Kilburn, R B Payne, D J Howarth, 1962)
1962 software
Discontinued operating systems
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