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92-685: Harris Computer Systems Corporation was an American computer company, in existence during the mid-1990s, that made real-time computing systems. Its products powered a variety of applications, including those for aerospace simulation , data acquisition and control , and signal processing . It was based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida . For twenty years prior, it had been the Harris Computer Systems Division of Harris Corporation , until being spun off as an independent company in 1994. Then in 1996, Harris Computer Systems Corporation itself

184-510: A Motorola 68040 or 68060 CPU in order to maintain backwards compatibility, as very few apps at the time could run natively on the PPC chips. However, the new machines never materialized, and Commodore subsequently declared bankruptcy. Over a decade later, AmigaOS 4 would be released, which would put the platform permanently on the architecture. OS4 is compatible with those first-generation accelerators, as well as several custom motherboards created for

276-497: A hard real-time system is to ensure that all deadlines are met, but for soft real-time systems the goal becomes meeting a certain subset of deadlines in order to optimize some application-specific criteria. The particular criteria optimized depend on the application, but some typical examples include maximizing the number of deadlines met, minimizing the lateness of tasks and maximizing the number of high priority tasks meeting their deadlines. Hard real-time systems are used when it

368-549: A superscalar implementation. Versions of the design exist in both 32-bit and 64-bit implementations. Starting with the basic POWER specification, the PowerPC added: Some instructions present in the POWER instruction set were deemed too complex and were removed in the PowerPC architecture. Some removed instructions could be emulated by the operating system if necessary. The removed instructions are: Most PowerPC chips switch endianness via

460-498: A bit in the MSR ( machine state register ), with a second bit provided to allow the OS to run with a different endianness. Accesses to the " inverted page table " (a hash table that functions as a TLB with off-chip storage) are always done in big-endian mode. The processor starts in big-endian mode. In little-endian mode, the three lowest-order bits of the effective address are exclusive-ORed with

552-423: A chess program designed to play in a tournament with a clock will need to decide on a move before a certain deadline or lose the game, and is therefore a real-time computation, but a chess program that is allowed to run indefinitely before moving is not. In both of these cases, however, high performance is desirable: the more work a tournament chess program can do in the allotted time, the better its moves will be, and

644-469: A high-performance digital flight control computer, powered by a quadraplex PowerPC-based processor setup on a HAL Tejas Mark 1A in 2024. Operating systems that work on the PowerPC architecture are generally divided into those that are oriented toward the general-purpose PowerPC systems, and those oriented toward the embedded PowerPC systems. Companies that have licensed the 64-bit POWER or 32-bit PowerPC from IBM include: PowerPC processors were used in

736-564: A line of Ada programming language compiler products. In 1984, Harris Computer made its first forays into having VOS co-exist alongside the Unix operating system . As Harris left 24-bit systems and moved to 32-bit architectures, Vulcan and VOS fell by the wayside and Unix-based ones took over. In this fashion, Harris Computer offered three operating systems: CX/RT, built around real-time processing features and constraints; CX/SX, for customers needing government-specified levels of security, and CX/UX, for

828-475: A mixture of hard real-time and non real-time applications. Firm real-time systems are more nebulously defined, and some classifications do not include them, distinguishing only hard and soft real-time systems. Some examples of firm real-time systems: Soft real-time systems are typically used to solve issues of concurrent access and the need to keep a number of connected systems up-to-date through changing situations. Some examples of soft real-time systems: In

920-459: A new incarnation of the Amiga platform. IBM also had a full line of PowerPC based desktops built and ready to ship; unfortunately, the operating system that IBM had intended to run on these desktops— Microsoft Windows NT —was not complete by early 1993, when the machines were ready for marketing. Accordingly, and further because IBM had developed animosity toward Microsoft, IBM decided to port OS/2 to

1012-425: A new port of OS/2 (with Intel emulation for application compatibility), pending a successful launch of the PowerPC 620. Throughout the mid-1990s, PowerPC processors achieved benchmark test scores that matched or exceeded those of the fastest x86 CPUs. Ultimately, demand for the new architecture on the desktop never truly materialized. Windows, OS/2, and Sun customers, faced with the lack of application software for

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1104-417: A property of the motherboard. An OS that operates in little-endian mode on a big-endian motherboard must both swap bytes and undo the exclusive-OR when accessing little-endian chips. AltiVec operations, despite being 128-bit, are treated as if they were 64-bit. This allows for compatibility with little-endian motherboards that were designed prior to AltiVec. An interesting side effect of this implementation

1196-440: A real-time digital signal processing (DSP) process, the analyzed (input) and generated (output) samples can be processed (or generated) continuously in the time it takes to input and output the same set of samples independent of the processing delay. It means that the processing delay must be bounded even if the processing continues for an unlimited time. That means that the mean processing time per sample, including overhead ,

1288-560: A real-time system: temporal failures (delays, time-outs, etc.) are typically small and compartmentalized (limited in effect) but are not catastrophic failures . In a real-time system, such as the FTSE 100 Index , a slow-down beyond limits would often be considered catastrophic in its application context. The most important requirement of a real-time system is consistent output, not high throughput. Some kinds of software, such as many chess-playing programs , can fall into either category. For instance,

1380-509: A real-world process is simulated at a rate that matched that of the real process (now called real-time simulation to avoid ambiguity). Analog computers , most often, were capable of simulating at a much faster pace than real-time, a situation that could be just as dangerous as a slow simulation if it were not also recognized and accounted for. Minicomputers, particularly in the 1970s onwards, when built into dedicated embedded systems such as DOG ( Digital on-screen graphic ) scanners, increased

1472-420: A response within any timeframe, although typical or expected response times may be given. Real-time processing fails if not completed within a specified deadline relative to an event; deadlines must always be met, regardless of system load . A real-time system has been described as one which "controls an environment by receiving data, processing them, and returning the results sufficiently quickly to affect

1564-526: A second source for the microprocessors. This three-way collaboration between Apple, IBM, and Motorola became known as the AIM alliance . In 1991, the PowerPC was just one facet of a larger alliance among these three companies. At the time, most of the personal computer industry was shipping systems based on the Intel 80386 and 80486 chips, which have a complex instruction set computer (CISC) architecture, and development of

1656-464: A sufficient limit to throughput delay so as to be tolerable to performers using stage monitors or in-ear monitors and not noticeable as lip sync error by the audience also directly watching the performers. Tolerable limits to latency for live, real-time processing is a subject of investigation and debate but is estimated to be between 6 and 20 milliseconds. Real-time bidirectional telecommunications delays of less than 300 ms ("round trip" or twice

1748-408: A system offering a Unix basis. The three CX variants shared the same object and file formats and could reside on the same disk drive as each other. The secure version of Unix was popular among some government contracts where security was a primary consideration. In particular, CX/SX reached B1 Orange Book and B1 Red Book status in the U.S. government's Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria . By

1840-400: A task: namely a bound or worst-case estimate for how long the task must execute. Specific algorithms for scheduling such hard real-time tasks exist, such as earliest deadline first , which, ignoring the overhead of context switching , is sufficient for system loads of less than 100%. New overlay scheduling systems, such as an adaptive partition scheduler assist in managing large systems with

1932-412: A three bit value selected by the length of the operand. This is enough to appear fully little-endian to normal software. An operating system will see a warped view of the world when it accesses external chips such as video and network hardware. Fixing this warped view requires that the motherboard perform an unconditional 64-bit byte swap on all data entering or leaving the processor. Endianness thus becomes

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2024-403: Is real-time. The grocer might go out of business or must at least lose business if they cannot make their checkout process real-time; thus, it is fundamentally important that this process is real-time. A signal processing algorithm that cannot keep up with the flow of input data with output falling farther and farther behind the input, is not real-time. But if the delay of the output (relative to

2116-792: Is another area where embedded PowerPC processors are found in large numbers. MSIL took the QUICC engine from the MC68302 and made the PowerQUICC MPC860. This was a very famous processor used in many Cisco edge routers in the late 1990s. Variants of the PowerQUICC include the MPC850, and the MPC823/MPC823e. All variants include a separate RISC microengine called the CPM that offloads communications processing tasks from

2208-451: Is assumed not to be necessary. High-performance is indicative of the amount of processing that is performed in a given amount of time, whereas real-time is the ability to get done with the processing to yield a useful output in the available time. The term "near real-time" or "nearly real-time" (NRT), in telecommunications and computing , refers to the time delay introduced, by automated data processing or network transmission, between

2300-431: Is imperative that an event be reacted to within a strict deadline. Such strong guarantees are required of systems for which not reacting in a certain interval of time would cause great loss in some manner, especially damaging the surroundings physically or threatening human lives (although the strict definition is simply that missing the deadline constitutes failure of the system). Some examples of hard real-time systems: In

2392-436: Is no greater than the sampling period, which is the reciprocal of the sampling rate . This is the criterion whether the samples are grouped together in large segments and processed as blocks or are processed individually and whether there are long, short, or non-existent input and output buffers . Consider an audio DSP example; if a process requires 2.01 seconds to analyze , synthesize , or process 2.00 seconds of sound, it

2484-460: Is not real-time. However, if it takes 1.99 seconds, it is or can be made into a real-time DSP process. A common life analogy is standing in a line or queue waiting for the checkout in a grocery store. If the line asymptotically grows longer and longer without bound, the checkout process is not real-time. If the length of the line is bounded, customers are being "processed" and output as rapidly, on average, as they are being inputted then that process

2576-527: Is now handled by Power.org where IBM, Freescale, and AMCC are members. PowerPC, Cell and POWER processors are now jointly marketed as the Power Architecture . Power.org released a unified ISA, combining POWER and PowerPC ISAs into the new Power ISA v.2.03 specification and a new reference platform for servers called PAPR (Power Architecture Platform Reference). Many PowerPC designs are named and labeled by their apparent technology generation. That began with

2668-404: Is one in which real-time control offers genuine advantages in terms of process performance and safety. A system is said to be real-time if the total correctness of an operation depends not only upon its logical correctness, but also upon the time in which it is performed. Real-time systems, as well as their deadlines, are classified by the consequence of missing a deadline: Thus, the goal of

2760-556: Is that a program can store a 64-bit value (the longest operand format) to memory while in one endian mode, switch modes, and read back the same 64-bit value without seeing a change of byte order. This will not be the case if the motherboard is switched at the same time. Mercury Systems and Matrox ran the PowerPC in little-endian mode. This was done so that PowerPC devices serving as co-processors on PCI boards could share data structures with host computers based on x86 . Both PCI and x86 are little-endian. OS/2 and Windows NT for PowerPC ran

2852-568: Is the PowerPC ( performance computing ) specification. The differences between the earlier POWER instruction set and that of PowerPC is outlined in Appendix E of the manual for PowerPC ISA v.2.02. Since 1991, IBM had a long-standing desire for a unifying operating system that would simultaneously host all existing operating systems as personalities upon one microkernel. From 1991 to 1995, the company designed and aggressively evangelized what would become Workplace OS , primarily targeting PowerPC. When

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2944-608: The AltiVec extensions in Motorola's 74xx series) was added. IBM's RS64 processors are a family of chips implementing the "Amazon" variant of the PowerPC architecture. These processors are used in the RS/6000 and IBM AS/400 computer families; the Amazon architecture includes proprietary extensions used by AS/400. The POWER4 and later POWER processors implement the Amazon architecture and replaced

3036-513: The Pentium processor was well underway. The PowerPC chip was one of several joint ventures involving the three alliance members, in their efforts to counter the growing Microsoft-Intel dominance of personal computing. For Motorola, POWER looked like an unbelievable deal. It allowed the company to sell a widely tested and powerful RISC CPU for little design cash on its own part. It also maintained ties with an important customer, Apple, and seemed to offer

3128-557: The Power ISA . The history of RISC began with IBM's 801 research project, on which John Cocke was the lead developer, where he developed the concepts of RISC in 1975–78. 801-based microprocessors were used in a number of IBM embedded products, eventually becoming the 16-register IBM ROMP processor used in the IBM RT PC . The RT PC was a rapid design implementing the RISC architecture. Between

3220-513: The backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing , sometimes abbreviated as PPC ) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple – IBM – Motorola alliance, known as AIM . PowerPC, as an evolving instruction set, has been named Power ISA since 2006, while the old name lives on as a trademark for some implementations of Power Architecture –based processors. Originally intended for personal computers ,

3312-547: The "G3", which was an internal project name inside AIM for the development of what would become the PowerPC 750 family . Apple popularized the term "G3" when they introduced Power Mac G3 and PowerBook G3 at an event at 10 November 1997. Motorola and Apple liked the moniker and used the term "G4" for the 7400 family introduced in 1998 and the Power Mac G4 in 1999. At the time the G4

3404-476: The 2nd generation "pure" PowerPC designs. Apple continued work on a new line of Macintosh computers based on the chip, and eventually released them as the 601-based Power Macintosh on March 14, 1994. Accelerator cards based on the first-generation PowerPC chips were created for the Amiga in anticipation for a move to a possible new Amiga platform designed around the PowerPC. The accelerator cards also included either

3496-457: The 8xx and designed in Israel by MSIL (Motorola Silicon Israel Limited). The 601 core is single issue, meaning it can only issue one instruction in a clock cycle. To this they add various bits of custom hardware, to allow for I/O on the one chip. In 2004, the next-generation four-digit 55xx devices were launched for the automotive market. These use the newer e200 series of PowerPC cores. Networking

3588-489: The Apple and IBM PowerPC desktops). Apple, which also lacked a PowerPC based OS, took a different route. Utilizing the portability platform yielded by the secret Star Trek project , the company ported the essential pieces of their Mac OS operating system to the PowerPC architecture, and further wrote a 68k emulator that could run 68k based applications and the parts of the OS that had not been rewritten. The second generation

3680-601: The CPU completely and use its own scheduler , without using native machine language and thus bypassing all interrupting Windows code. However, several coding libraries exist which offer real time capabilities in a high level language on a variety of operating systems, for example Java Real Time . Later microprocessors such as the Motorola 68000 and subsequent family members (68010, 68020, ColdFire etc.) also became popular with manufacturers of industrial control systems. This application area

3772-531: The Concurrent acquisition renamed itself to the CyberGuard Corporation . Real-time computing The term "real-time" is also used in simulation to mean that the simulation's clock runs at the same speed as a real clock. Real-time responses are often understood to be in the order of milliseconds, and sometimes microseconds. A system not specified as operating in real time cannot usually guarantee

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3864-540: The H800 and H1200. The operating system for the H-Series was called Vulcan, which around 1982 started being replaced by one called VOS. The H-series systems typically had support for a number of different programming languages, including Fortran , COBOL , Pascal , BASIC , APL , SNOBOL , RPG , and assembly language . In addition, as a company involved in defense-related contracts, Harris Computer Systems Division came out with

3956-448: The Mac OS could not fit in 8 KB and thus slowed the computer drastically. The 603e solved this problem by having a 16 KB L1 cache , which allowed the emulator to run efficiently. In 1993, developers at IBM's Essex Junction, Burlington, Vermont facility started to work on a version of the PowerPC that would support the Intel x86 instruction set directly on the CPU. While this

4048-576: The PowerPC in the form of Workplace OS. This new software platform spent three years (1992 to 1995) in development and was canceled with the December 1995 developer release, because of the disappointing launch of the PowerPC 620. For this reason, the IBM PowerPC desktops did not ship, although the reference design (codenamed Sandalbow) based on the PowerPC 601 CPU was released as an RS/6000 model ( Byte ' s April 1994 issue included an extensive article about

4140-485: The PowerPC, almost universally ignored the chip. IBM's Workplace OS platform (and thus, OS/2 for PowerPC) was summarily canceled upon its first developers' release in December 1995 due to the simultaneous buggy launch of the PowerPC 620. The PowerPC versions of Solaris and Windows were discontinued after only a brief period on the market. Only on the Macintosh, due to Apple's persistence, did the PowerPC gain traction. To Apple,

4232-502: The RS64 chips in the RS/6000 and AS/400 families. IBM developed a separate product line called the "4xx" line focused on the embedded market. These designs included the 401, 403, 405, 440, and 460. In 2004, IBM sold their 4xx product line to Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (AMCC). AMCC continues to develop new high performance products, partly based on IBM's technology, along with technology that

4324-516: The Somerset Design Center. The building is named after the site in Arthurian legend where warring forces put aside their swords, and members of the three teams that staff the building say the spirit that inspired the name has been a key factor in the project's success thus far. Part of the culture here is not to have an IBM or Motorola or Apple culture, but to have our own. Toward the close of

4416-424: The alliance between IBM and Motorola, both companies had development efforts underway internally. The PowerQUICC line was the result of this work inside Motorola. The 4xx series of embedded processors was underway inside IBM. The IBM embedded processor business grew to nearly US$ 100 million in revenue and attracted hundreds of customers. The development of the PowerPC is centered at an Austin, Texas, facility called

4508-566: The architecture is well known for being used by Apple's desktop and laptop lines from 1994 until 2006, and in several videogame consoles including Microsoft's Xbox 360 , Sony's PlayStation 3 , and Nintendo's GameCube , Wii , and Wii U . PowerPC was also used for the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on Mars and a variety of satellites. It has since become a niche architecture for personal computers, particularly with AmigaOS 4 implementations, but remains popular for embedded systems . PowerPC

4600-565: The best components of each company would be the ones moving forward, in practice it was the PowerPC-based Night Hawk business that mostly continued, while Concurrent's own product, based on a different processor, was de-emphasized. As a result, the offices in New Jersey gradually all but disappeared. The CyberGuard network security business was not included in the deal, and indeed what remained of Harris Computer Systems Corporation after

4692-622: The central processor and has functions for DMA . The follow-on chip from this family, the MPC8260, has a 603e-based core and a different CPM. Honda also uses PowerPC processors for its ASIMO robot. In 2003, BAE Systems Platform Solutions delivered the Vehicle-Management Computer for the F-35 fighter jet. This platform consists of dual PowerPCs made by Freescale in a triple redundant setup. Aeronautical Development Establishment tested

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4784-525: The civilian world. At the same time, Harris Computer Systems introduced a product for network security called CyberGuard, whose purpose was to protect systems against unauthorized incursion over the Internet. Harris Computer Systems continued to be involved in the Ada language world. In addition to compilers, the company put out APSE -related runtime environments with symbolic debugging and tracing capabilities. During

4876-435: The context of multitasking systems the scheduling policy is normally priority driven ( pre-emptive schedulers). In some situations, these can guarantee hard real-time performance (for instance if the set of tasks and their priorities is known in advance). There are other hard real-time schedulers such as rate-monotonic which is not common in general-purpose systems, as it requires additional information in order to schedule

4968-537: The decade, manufacturing issues began plaguing the AIM alliance in much the same way they did Motorola, which consistently pushed back deployments of new processors for Apple and other vendors: first from Motorola in the 1990s with the PowerPC 7xx and 74xx processors, and IBM with the 64-bit PowerPC 970 processor in 2003. In 2004, Motorola exited the chip manufacturing business by spinning off its semiconductor business as an independent company called Freescale Semiconductor . Around

5060-499: The embedded market. It was later and slower than promised, and IBM used their own POWER3 design instead, offering no 64-bit "small" version until the late-2002 introduction of the PowerPC 970 . The 970 is a 64-bit processor derived from the POWER4 server processor. To create it, the POWER4 core was modified to be backward-compatible with 32-bit PowerPC processors, and a vector unit (similar to

5152-684: The environment at that time". The term "real-time" is used in process control and enterprise systems to mean "without significant delay". Real-time software may use one or more of the following: synchronous programming languages , real-time operating systems (RTOSes), and real-time networks, each of which provide essential frameworks on which to build a real-time software application. Systems used for many safety-critical applications must be real-time, such as for control of fly-by-wire aircraft, or anti-lock brakes , both of which demand immediate and accurate mechanical response. The term real-time derives from its use in early simulation , in which

5244-401: The faster an unconstrained chess program runs, the sooner it will be able to move. This example also illustrates the essential difference between real-time computations and other computations: if the tournament chess program does not make a decision about its next move in its allotted time it loses the game—i.e., it fails as a real-time computation—while in the other scenario, meeting the deadline

5336-461: The first superscalar RISC implementations, is a high performance, multi-chip design. IBM soon realized that a single-chip microprocessor was needed in order to scale its RS/6000 line from lower-end to high-end machines. Work began on a one-chip POWER microprocessor, designated the RSC ( RISC Single Chip ). In early 1991, IBM realized its design could potentially become a high-volume microprocessor used across

5428-471: The first PowerPC products reached the market, they were met with enthusiasm. In addition to Apple, both IBM and the Motorola Computer Group offered systems built around the processors. Microsoft released Windows NT 3.51 for the architecture, which was used in Motorola's PowerPC servers, and Sun Microsystems offered a version of its Solaris OS. IBM ported its AIX Unix . Workplace OS featured

5520-551: The foreground to threads/tasks with the highest priority. Real-time operating systems would also be used for time-sharing multiuser duties. For example, Data General Business Basic could run in the foreground or background of RDOS and would introduce additional elements to the scheduling algorithm to make it more appropriate for people interacting via dumb terminals . Early personal computers were sometimes used for real-time computing. The possibility of deactivating other interrupts allowed for hard-coded loops with defined timing, and

5612-832: The formation of the Harris Computer Systems Division. Some of the later "Slash" systems were sold under the Harris name. The Harris Computer Systems Division then came out with the H-Series product line, which featured virtual memory as a key aspect. It remained one of the few 24-bit computers available at the time. Such models included the H80 and H100 minicomputers. Like other Harris Computer systems, these were geared towards multiple-processing jobs and real-time environments. H-series products were generally good at maintaining binary compatibility, meaning old application executables could still run on newer models. Later models included

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5704-402: The goal of collaborating on the development of a family of single-chip microprocessors based on the POWER architecture. Soon after, Apple, being one of Motorola's largest customers of desktop-class microprocessors, asked Motorola to join the discussions due to their long relationship, Motorola having had more extensive experience with manufacturing high-volume microprocessors than IBM, and to form

5796-405: The hardware and software for an anti-lock braking system have been designed to meet its required deadlines, no further performance gains are obligatory or even useful. Furthermore, if a network server is highly loaded with network traffic, its response time may be slower but will (in most cases) still succeed before it times out (hits its deadline). Hence, such a network server would not be considered

5888-438: The industry. Apple had already realized the limitations and risks of its dependency upon a single CPU vendor at a time when Motorola was falling behind on delivering the 68040 CPU. Furthermore, Apple had conducted its own research and made an experimental quad-core CPU design called Aquarius, which convinced the company's technology leadership that the future of computing was in the RISC methodology. IBM approached Apple with

5980-411: The input) is bounded regarding a process that operates over an unlimited time, then that signal processing algorithm is real-time, even if the throughput delay may be very long. Real-time signal processing is necessary, but not sufficient in and of itself, for live signal processing such as what is required in live event support . Live audio digital signal processing requires both real-time operation and

6072-577: The late 1980s/early 1990s, the major product of Harris Computer Systems Division was the Night Hawk series of real-time systems. In 1989, the first Night Hawk systems based on the Motorola 88000 processor line came out. The systems were mainly targeted for the real-time domain, including for aerospace simulation , signal processing , and CI uses. Night Hawk models included the NH-1200, NH-3400, NH-4400, NH-4800, and NH-5800. Then in 1992, Harris announced it

6164-513: The low interrupt latency allowed the implementation of a real-time operating system, giving the user interface and the disk drives lower priority than the real-time thread. Compared to these the programmable interrupt controller of the Intel CPUs (8086..80586) generates a very large latency and the Windows operating system is neither a real-time operating system nor does it allow a program to take over

6256-479: The mid-1990s, Harris Computer Systems was also involved in the process for revising the Ada Semantic Interface Specification . In March 1995, Harris Computer Systems, led by CEO Siegel, looked to buy Concurrent Computer Corporation, its main competitor, but the discussions tripped over business, legal, and cultural issues and ended in acrimony. Negotiations resumed late in the year, albeit in

6348-458: The need for low-latency priority-driven responses to important interactions with incoming data and so operating systems such as Data General 's RDOS (Real-Time Disk Operating System) and RTOS with background and foreground scheduling as well as Digital Equipment Corporation 's RT-11 date from this era. Background-foreground scheduling allowed low priority tasks CPU time when no foreground task needed to execute, and gave absolute priority within

6440-478: The new enterprise. It had revenues of about $ 60 million, and had earned about $ 2 million over the year prior. Said John Hartley, the head of Harris Corporation: "This is a well-established, profitable business that we believe will best realize its full potential as a stand-alone public corporation." The CEO of the new company was Siegel, who said "this move will give the new company greater access to capital markets for future growth." The new company's business focus

6532-399: The occurrence of an event and the use of the processed data, such as for display or feedback and control purposes. For example, a near-real-time display depicts an event or situation as it existed at the current time minus the processing time, as nearly the time of the live event. The distinction between the terms "near real time" and "real time" is somewhat nebulous and must be defined for

6624-451: The opposite direction, and in June 1996, Concurrent acquired the high-performance computer business of Harris Computer Systems. However, the corporate headquarters was moved from New Jersey to Harris's location of Fort Lauderdale, Florida . Harris Computer Systems' Siegel was named CEO of Concurrent Computer, while existing Concurrent CEO was made chair of the board of directors. While in theory

6716-510: The other database can import/export on a scheduled basis so that they can sync/share common data in "near real-time" with each other. Several methods exist to aid the design of real-time systems, an example of which is MASCOT , an old but very successful method which represents the concurrent structure of the system. Other examples are HOOD , Real-Time UML, AADL , the Ravenscar profile , and Real-Time Java . PowerPC PowerPC (with

6808-757: The performance limitations of the chip for future personal computer hardware specifically related to heat generation and energy usage, as well as the inability of IBM to move the 970 processor to the 3 GHz range. The IBM-Freescale alliance was replaced by an open standards body called Power.org. Power.org operates under the governance of the IEEE with IBM continuing to use and evolve the PowerPC processor on game consoles and Freescale Semiconductor focusing solely on embedded devices. IBM continues to develop PowerPC microprocessor cores for use in their application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) offerings. Many high volume applications embed PowerPC cores. The PowerPC specification

6900-422: The performance of the PowerPC was a bright spot in the face of increased competition from Windows 95 and Windows NT-based PCs. With the cancellation of Workplace OS, the general PowerPC platform (especially AIM's Common Hardware Reference Platform ) was instead seen as a hardware-only compromise to run many operating systems one at a time upon a single unifying vendor-neutral hardware platform. In parallel with

6992-447: The possibility of adding IBM too, which might buy smaller versions from Motorola instead of making its own. At this point Motorola already had its own RISC design in the form of the 88000 , which was doing poorly in the market. Motorola was doing well with its 68000 family and the majority of the funding was focused on this. The 88000 effort was somewhat starved for resources. The 88000 was already in production, however; Data General

7084-552: The processor in little-endian mode while Solaris, AIX and Linux ran in big endian. Some of IBM's embedded PowerPC chips use a per-page endianness bit. None of the previous applies to them. The first implementation of the architecture was the PowerPC 601 , released in 1992, based on the RSC, implementing a hybrid of the POWER1 and PowerPC instructions. This allowed the chip to be used by IBM in their existing POWER1-based platforms, although it also meant some slight pain when switching to

7176-412: The rumors, the switching process took only 5 cycles, or the amount of time needed for the processor to empty its instruction pipeline. Microsoft also aided the processor's demise by refusing to support the PowerPC mode. The first 64-bit implementation is the PowerPC 620 , but it appears to have seen little use because Apple didn't want to buy it and because, with its large die area, it was too costly for

7268-579: The same time, IBM exited the 32-bit embedded processor market by selling its line of PowerPC products to Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (AMCC) and focusing on 64-bit chip designs, while maintaining its commitment of PowerPC CPUs toward game console makers such as Nintendo 's GameCube , Wii and Wii U , Sony 's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft 's Xbox 360 , of which the latter two both use 64-bit processors. In 2005, Apple announced they would no longer use PowerPC processors in their Apple Macintosh computers, favoring Intel -produced processors instead, citing

7360-462: The situation at hand. The term implies that there are no significant delays. In many cases, processing described as "real-time" would be more accurately described as "near real-time". Near real-time also refers to delayed real-time transmission of voice and video. It allows playing video images, in approximately real-time, without having to wait for an entire large video file to download. Incompatible databases can export/import to common flat files that

7452-404: The unidirectional delay) are considered "acceptable" to avoid undesired "talk-over" in conversation. Real-time computing is sometimes misunderstood to be high-performance computing , but this is not an accurate classification. For example, a massive supercomputer executing a scientific simulation may offer impressive performance, yet it is not executing a real-time computation. Conversely, once

7544-569: The years of 1982 and 1984, IBM started a project to build the fastest microprocessor on the market; this new 32-bit architecture became referred to as the America Project throughout its development cycle, which lasted for approximately 5–6 years. The result is the POWER instruction set architecture , introduced with the RISC System/6000 in early 1990. The original POWER microprocessor , one of

7636-423: Was "pure" and includes the "low end" PowerPC 603 and "high end" PowerPC 604 . The 603 is notable due to its very low cost and power consumption. This was a deliberate design goal on Motorola's part, who used the 603 project to build the basic core for all future generations of PPC chips. Apple tried to use the 603 in a new laptop design but was unable due to the small 8  KB level 1 cache. The 68000 emulator in

7728-829: Was acquired by Concurrent Computer Corporation . The origins of Harris Computer Systems began in 1967 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida , when Datacraft Corporation was founded. It would specialize in minicomputers for the scientific engineering market and for educational use. The best known of these were the DC-6024 line, which were based on a 24-bit computing architecture and debuted in 1969. Successive models were denoted with names such as DC-6024/1 and DC-6024/4, which became known as "Slash 1", "Slash 4", and so forth. The Slash 1 made cost-effective use of hardware for floating-point operations and quickly became popular as alternatives to computers from Systems Engineering Laboratories . In 1974, Harris Corporation acquired Datacraft, which led to

7820-548: Was developed within AMCC. These products focus on a variety of applications including networking, wireless, storage, printing/imaging and industrial automation. Numerically, the PowerPC is mostly found in controllers in cars. For the automotive market, Freescale Semiconductor initially offered many variations called the MPC5xx family such as the MPC555, built on a variation of the 601 core called

7912-476: Was intended for high-performance, real-time applications in both the government and commercial sectors. Night Hawk was especially strong in the flight simulator market. The main competitor of Harris Computer Systems Corporation was Concurrent Computer Corporation of Monmouth County, New Jersey . A secondary competitor was Encore Computer of Massachusetts. During 1994 to 1995, Harris Computer also garnered some large aviation and telecommunications contracts in

8004-416: Was just one of several concurrent power architecture projects that IBM was working on, this chip began to be known inside IBM and by the media as the PowerPC 615 . Profitability concerns and rumors of performance issues in the switching between the x86 and native PowerPC instruction sets resulted in the project being canceled in 1995 after only a limited number of chips were produced for in-house testing. Aside

8096-407: Was launched, Motorola categorized all their PowerPC models (former, current and future) according to what generation they adhered to, even renaming the older 603e core "G2". Motorola had a G5 project that never came to fruition, and Apple later used the name when the 970 family launched in 2003, though it was designed and built by IBM. The PowerPC is designed along RISC principles and allows for

8188-422: Was on systems for real-time simulation and simulation for training and for data acquisition and control . An additional focus was on secure systems . Its headquarters were those of the division prior, being in Fort Lauderdale, Florida . The company's main product was (continued to be) the Night Hawk computer system, which featured high performance, multi-processing, and real-time capabilities. Accordingly, it

8280-455: Was shipping 88000 machines and Apple already had 88000 prototype machines running. The 88000 had also achieved a number of embedded design wins in telecom applications. If the new POWER one-chip version could be made bus-compatible at a hardware level with the 88000, that would allow both Apple and Motorola to bring machines to market far faster since they would not have to redesign their board architecture. The result of these various requirements

8372-413: Was switching to the PowerPC architecture. The Harris Computer Systems Division also made a network firewall product, that they sold to their governmental agency customers. E. Courtney "Corky" Siegel was general manager of the division. On October 7, 1994, Harris Computer Systems Corporation came into being, as a spinoff to Harris Corporation shareholders. There were some 480 employees who joined

8464-453: Was the cornerstone of AIM's PReP and Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP) initiatives in the 1990s. It is largely based on the earlier IBM POWER architecture , and retains a high level of compatibility with it; the architectures have remained close enough that the same programs and operating systems will run on both if some care is taken in preparation; newer chips in the Power series use

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