In 1960s, integrated circuits appeared alongside transistors. Integration has paved the way for smaller computers, less power consumption, less heat generation, longer uptimes, larger memory and lots of other related improvements. Cabinet-sized minicomputers have appeared alongside room-sized mainframe computers. The computers run operating systems that support executing multiple programs in parallel with virtual memory provided by paging.
| Hardware | Year | Software |
|---|---|---|
| Integrated circuit - a technology to integrate multiple transistors within a single device has developed by Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductors. | 1961 | Â |
| Mouse - an input device with two wheels developed by Douglas Engelbart at SRI. | 1963 | Â |
| IBM System/360 - a computer developed by IBM. The first computer with configurable assembly from modules. | 1964 | Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC) - a programming language developed by J. Kemeny and T. Kurtz at Dartmouth College. Time Sharing System (TSS) - an operating system developed at IBM. |
| Â | 1965 | MULTICS - an operating system developed at Bell Laboratories. |
| Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) - a memory circuit developed at IBM. | 1966 | Â |
| ARPANET - a network project at ARPA. | 1969 | Â |
| Â | 1970 | Uniplexed Information and Computing System (UNICS, UNIX) - an operating system developed at Bell Laboratories. |
| Â | 1971 | Pascal - a programming language developed by Niklaus Wirth at ETH Zurich. |
| Â | 1972 | SmallTalk - a programming language developed by Alan Kay at Xerox PARC. |
| Mouse - an input device with a single ball developed by Bill English at Xeroc PARC. | 1973 | Â |
A well known computer of the time, IBM System/360, has been the first to introduce configurable assembly from modules. The computer used the OS/360 operating system, famous for its numerous bugs and cryptic messages. OS/360 supported executing multiple programs in parallel and introduced spooling of peripheral operations. Another famous operating system was Multiplexed Information And Computing Service (MULTICS), designed for providing public computing services in a manner similar to telephone or electricity. MULTICS supported memory mapped files, dynamic linking and reconfiguration.
An important line of minicomputers was produced by Digital Equipment Corporation. The first of the line was DEC PDP-1 in 1961, which could perform arithmetic operations in tens of microseconds and was equipped with 4k words of memory, one word being 18 bits. All this at a fraction of the size and cost of comparable mainframe computers.