Some Technical Specifications of the Analytical Engine

by Martin F. Johansen, 2013

Babbage's plans of the Analytical Engine include between 50,000 and 80,000 parts; it would be powered by a steam engine. It would be the size of a small locomotive. Quoting Doron Swade, the Analytical Engine had "all the essential logical features of a modern digital computer", "these feature are explicitly embodied in his design". The following specifications were listed by Doron Swade in a talk at the Computer History Museum, May 1, 2008 and further elaborated in his talk at The Neukom Institute at Dartmouth.

100, 50-digit variables or number columns (It is linear, and thus extensible. He spoke of support for 1000.)
50-digit internal Mill variables (CPU registers of approx. 166-bits)
programmable using punched cards
internal architecture, store and mill separation (memory and CPU separation)
serial fetch-execute cycle
conditional branching (If-then-else-statements)
iterative looping
micro-programming
pipe-lining
anticipating carriage (carry look-ahead)
internal reportoire of automatic operations (+, -, *, /)
parallel processing
output in printed form, punched cards and graph-plotter
considered other number bases including binary, 3, 5, 12, 16, 100
pulse-shaping (cleaning up degraded transitions)
internal buffering