AmigaOS in the context of Kernel (operating system)

Commodore International Corporation (CI), also known as Commodore International Limited, was a home computer and electronics manufacturer with its head office in The Bahamas and its executive office in the United States founded in 1976 by Jack Tramiel and Irving Gould. It was the successor company to Commodore Business Machines (Canada) Ltd., established in 1958 by Tramiel and Manfred Kapp. Commodore International, along with its U.S. subsidiary Commodore Business Machines, Inc. (CBM), was a significant participant in the development of the home computer industry, and at one point in the 1980s was the world's largest in the industry.

The company released its first home computer, the Commodore PET, in 1977; it was followed by the VIC-20, the first ever computer to reach one million units of sales. In 1982, the company developed and marketed the world's best selling computer, the Commodore 64; its success made Commodore one of the world's largest personal computer manufacturers, with sales peaking in the last quarter of 1983 at $49 million (equivalent to $129 million in 2024). However an internal struggle led to co-founder Tramiel quitting, then rivaling Commodore under Atari Corporation joined by a number of other employees. Commodore in 1985 launched the Amiga 1000 personal computer — running on AmigaOS featuring a full color graphical interface and preemptive multitasking — which would initially become a popular platform for computer games and creative software. The company did particularly well in European markets; in West Germany, Commodore machines were ubiquitous as of 1989.

Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model significantly improves graphical and audio capabilities compared to 8-bit systems, and is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-bit or 16/32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, and mouse-based GUIs. These include the Atari ST, Macintosh, Archimedes, and later the Apple IIGS. The Amiga differs from its contemporaries through custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprites, a blitter, and four channels of sample-based audio. It runs a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS, with a desktop environment called Workbench.

The Amiga 1000, based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, was released in July 1985. Production problems kept it from becoming widely available until early 1986. While early advertisements cast the computer as an all-purpose business machine, especially with the Sidecar IBM PC compatibility add-on, the Amiga was most commercially successful as a home computer with a range of video games and creative software. The bestselling model, the Amiga 500, was introduced in 1987 along with the more expandable Amiga 2000. The 1990 Amiga 3000 includes a minor update to the graphics hardware via the Enhanced Chip Set also used in subsequent models.