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A User Machine in a Time-Sharing System
January 1, 1966
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Authors

Butler Lampson

W.W. Lichtenberger

M.W. Pirtle
Publication Type
Inproceedings
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
© 1966 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to
reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new
collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted
component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.

Abstract
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Related Info
Abstract
This paper describes the design of the computer seen by a machine-language programmer in a
time-sharing system developed at the University of California at Berkeley. Some of the
instructions in this machine are executed by the hardware, and some are implemented by
software. The user, however, thinks of them all as part of his machine, a machine having
extensive and unusual capabilities, many of which might be part of the hardware of a
(considerably more expensive) computer. Among the important features of the machine are the
arithmetic and string manipulation instructions, the very general memory allocation and
configuration mechanism, and the multiple processes which can be created by the program.
Facilities are provided for communication among these processes and for the control of
exceptional conditions. The input-output system is capable of handling all of the peripheral
equipment in a uniform and convenient manner through files having symbolic names. Programs
can access files belonging to a number of people, but each person can protect his own files from
unauthorized access by others. Some mention is made at various points of the techniques of
implementation, but the main emphasis is on the appearance of the user’s machine.
Related Info
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 word.doc
Research Areas
 Programming languages and software engineering
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 Microsoft Research Lab - Redmond
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