COMPUTER ORGANIZATION: Architecture

The term Computer Architecture was first defined in the paper by Amdahl, Blaauw and Brooks of IBM Corporation announcing IBM System/360 computer family on April 7, 1964. On that day IBM Corporation introduced, in the words of IBM spokesman, "the most important product announcement that this corporation has made in its history". There were six models introduced originally, ranging in performance from 25 to 1. Six years later this performance range was increased to about 200 to 1. This was the key feature which prompted IBM's effort to design an architecture for a new line of computers that are to be code compatible with each other. The recognition that architecture and implementation could be separated and that one need not imply the other led to establishment of a common System/360 machine architecture implemented in the range of models.