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83-481: There are two CPU cores used in the 683xx family: the 68EC000 and the CPU32. The instruction set of the CPU32 core is similar to the 68020 without bitfield instructions, and with a few instructions unique to the CPU32 core, such as table lookup and interpolate instructions, and a low-power stop mode. The modules of the microcontroller were designed independently and released as new CPUs could be tested. This process let

166-562: A 16-bit external data bus . For this reason, Motorola termed it a 16/32-bit processor. As one of the first widely available processors with a 32-bit instruction set, large unsegmented address space, and relatively high speed for the era, the 68k was a popular design through the 1980s. It was widely used in a new generation of personal computers with graphical user interfaces , including the Macintosh 128K , Amiga , Atari ST , and X68000 . The Sega Genesis/Mega Drive console, released in 1988,

249-525: A 16-bit status register. The upper 8 bits is the system byte, and modification of it is privileged. The lower 8 bits is the user byte, also known as the condition code register (CCR), and modification of it is not privileged. The 68000 comparison, arithmetic, and logic operations modify condition codes to record their results for use by later conditional jumps. The condition code bits are "carry" (C), "overflow" (V), "zero" (Z), "negative" (N) and "extend" (X). The "extend" (X) flag deserves special mention, because it

332-413: A 64-pin package. This became known as the "Texas Cockroach". By the mid-1970s, Motorola's MOS design techniques had become less advanced than their competition, and their fabrication lines at times struggled with low yields . By the late-1970s, the company had entered a technology exchange program with Hitachi , dramatically improving their production capabilities. As part of this, a new fab named MOS-8

415-463: A dual 68000 CPU configuration, and systems with a triple 68000 CPU configuration also exist (such as Galaxy Force and others based on the Sega Y Board), along with a quad 68000 CPU configuration, which has been used by Jaleco (one 68000 for sound has a lower clock rate compared to the other 68000 CPUs) for games such as Big Run and Cisco Heat ; another, fifth 68000 (at a different clock rate than

498-575: A few proprietary minicomputer architectures survive. The IBM System/38 operating system, which introduced many advanced concepts, lives on with IBM's AS/400 . Great efforts were made by IBM to enable programs originally written for the IBM System/34 and System/36 to be moved to the AS/400. After being rebranded multiple times, the AS/400 platform was replaced by IBM Power Systems running IBM i . In contrast, competing proprietary computing architectures from

581-491: A higher-numbered interrupt can always interrupt a lower-numbered interrupt. In the status register, a privileged instruction allows setting the current minimum interrupt level, blocking lower or equal priority interrupts. For example, if the interrupt level in the status register is set to 3, higher levels from 4 to 7 can cause an exception. Level 7 is a level triggered non-maskable interrupt (NMI). Level 1 can be interrupted by any higher level. Level 0 means no interrupt. The level

664-437: A logically flat 32-bit address space , while accessing only a 24-bit physical address space. Motorola's intent with the internal 32-bit address space was forward compatibility, making it feasible to write 68000 software that would take full advantage of later 32-bit implementations of the 68000 instruction set. However, this did not prevent programmers from writing forward incompatible software. "24-bit" software that discarded

747-413: A minimum instruction size of 16 bits. Many instructions and addressing modes are longer to include more address or mode bits. The CPU, and later the whole family, implements two levels of privilege. User mode gives access to everything except privileged instructions such as interrupt level controls. Supervisor privilege gives access to everything. An interrupt always becomes supervisory. The supervisor bit

830-470: A result, less expensive. They were used in manufacturing process control, telephone switching and to control laboratory equipment. In the 1970s, they were the hardware that was used to launch the computer-aided design (CAD) industry and other similar industries where a small dedicated system was needed. The boom in worldwide seismic exploration for oil and gas in the early 1970s saw the widespread use of minicomputers in dedicated processing centres close to

913-549: A second-source maker of the CMOS 68HC000 (TMP68HC000). Encrypted variants of the 68000, being the Hitachi FD1089 and FD1094, store decryption keys for opcodes and opcode data in battery-backed memory and were used in certain Sega arcade systems including System 16 to prevent piracy and illegal bootleg games. The 68HC000, the first CMOS version of the 68000, was designed by Hitachi and jointly introduced in 1985. Motorola's version

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996-502: A teleprinter and at least four thousand words of memory, that is capable of running programs in a higher level language, such as Fortran or BASIC . The class formed a distinct group with its own software architectures and operating systems. Minis were designed for control, instrumentation, human interaction, and communication switching as distinct from calculation and record keeping. Many were sold indirectly to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for final end-use application. During

1079-484: Is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor , introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector. The design implements a 32-bit instruction set , with 32-bit registers and a 16-bit internal data bus . The address bus is 24 bits and does not use memory segmentation , which made it easier to program for. Internally, it uses a 16-bit data arithmetic logic unit (ALU) and two more 16-bit ALUs used mostly for addresses, and has

1162-399: Is a type of smaller general-purpose computer developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors . In a 1970 survey, The New York Times suggested a consensus definition of a minicomputer as a machine costing less than US$ 25,000 (equivalent to $ 196,000 in 2023 ), with an input-output device such as

1245-469: Is also powered by the 68000. Later processors in the Motorola 68000 series , beginning with the Motorola 68020 , use full 32-bit ALUs and have full 32-bit address and data buses, speeding up 32-bit operations and allowing 32-bit addressing, rather than the 24-bit addressing of the 68000 and 68010 or the 31-bit addressing of the Motorola 68012 . The original 68k is generally software forward-compatible with

1328-608: Is also the CPU of the Sega Pico , a young childrens' educational game console. The multi-processor Atari Jaguar console from 1993 used a 68000 as a support chip, although, due to familiarity, some developers used it as the primary processor. The 1994 Sega Saturn console used the 68000 as a sound co-processor. In October 1995, the 68000 made it into a handheld game console , Sega's Genesis Nomad , as its CPU. Certain arcade games (such as Steel Gunner and others based on Namco System 2 ) use

1411-755: Is called the MC68HC000, while Hitachi's is the HD68HC000. The 68HC000 offers speeds of 8–20 MHz. Except for using CMOS circuitry, it behaved identically to the HMOS MC68000, but the change to CMOS greatly reduced its power consumption. The original HMOS MC68000 consumed around 1.35  watts at an ambient temperature of 25  °C , regardless of clock speed, while the MC68HC000 consumed only 0.13 watts at 8 MHz and 0.38 watts at 20 MHz. (Unlike CMOS circuits, HMOS still draws power when idle, so power consumption varies little with clock rate.) Apple selected

1494-448: Is seldom used today; the contemporary term for this class of system is " midrange computer ", such as the higher-end SPARC from Oracle , Power ISA from IBM , and Itanium -based systems from Hewlett-Packard . The term "minicomputer" developed in the 1960s to describe the smaller computers that became possible with the use of transistors and core memory technologies, minimal instructions sets and less expensive peripherals such as

1577-410: Is separate from the carry flag . This permits the extra bit from arithmetic, logic, and shift operations to be separated from the carry multiprecision arithmetic . The designers attempted to make the assembly language orthogonal . That is, instructions are divided into operations and address modes , and almost all address modes are available for almost all instructions. There are 56 instructions and

1660-406: Is sometimes pointed to as an early example of a minicomputer, as it was small, transistorized and (relatively) inexpensive. However, its basic price of $ 100,000 (equivalent to $ 1,029,921 in 2023) and custom desk-like chassis places it within the "small system" or "midrange computer" category as opposed to the more modern use of the term minicomputer. Nevertheless, it retains a strong contender for

1743-458: Is stored in the status register, and is visible to user programs. An advantage of this system is that the supervisor level has a separate stack pointer. This permits a multitasking system to use very small stacks for tasks, because the designers do not have to allocate the memory required to hold the stack frames of a maximum stack-up of interrupts. The CPU recognizes seven interrupt levels. Levels 1 through 5 are strictly prioritized. That is,

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1826-412: Is stored in the status register, and is visible to user-level programs. Hardware interrupts are signalled to the CPU using three inputs that encode the highest pending interrupt priority. A separate encoder is usually required to encode the interrupts, though for systems that do not require more than three hardware interrupts it is possible to connect the interrupt signals directly to the encoded inputs at

1909-446: The 68020 and 88000 projects. Several other companies were second-source manufacturers of the HMOS 68000. These included Hitachi (HD68000), who shrank the feature size to 2.7 μm for their 12.5 MHz version, Mostek (MK68000), Rockwell (R68000), Signetics (SCN68000), Thomson / SGS-Thomson (originally EF68000 and later TS68000), and Toshiba (TMP68000). Toshiba was also

1992-531: The 680x0 , CPU32 , and Coldfire families, were also still in production. More recently, with the Sendai fab closure, all 68HC000, 68020, 68030, and 68882 parts have been discontinued, leaving only the 68SEC000 in production. Since being succeeded by "true" 32-bit microprocessors, the 68000 is used as the core of many microcontrollers . In 1989, Motorola introduced the MC68302 communications processor. IBM considered

2075-646: The Data General Nova or PDP-8 . Based on the semiconductor manufacturing processes of the era, these were often multi-chip solutions like the National Semiconductor IMP-16 , or the single-chip PACE that had issues with speed. With the sales prospects for the 6800 dimming, but still cash-flush from the engine control sales, in late 1976 Colin Crook, Operations Manager, began considering how to successfully win future sales. They were aware that Intel

2158-482: The Macintosh moved from the 6809 to the 68k. The average price eventually reached $ 14.76. In 1982, the 68000 received a minor update to its instruction set architecture (ISA) to support virtual memory and to conform to the Popek and Goldberg virtualization requirements . The updated chip is called the 68010 . It also adds a new "loop mode" which speeds up small loops, and increases overall performance by about 10% at

2241-507: The Motorola 68000 Educational Computer Board , a single-board computer for educational and training purposes which in addition to the 68000 itself contained memory, I/O devices, programmable timer and wire-wrap area for custom circuitry. The board remained in use in US colleges as a tool for learning assembly programming until the early 1990s. At its introduction, the 68000 was first used in high-priced systems, including multiuser microcomputers like

2324-819: The Palm PDAs and the Handspring Visor used the DragonBall , a derivative of the 68000. AlphaSmart used the DragonBall family in later versions of its portable word processors. Texas Instruments used the 68000 in its high-end graphing calculators, the TI-89 and TI-92 series and Voyage 200 . A modified version of the 68000 formed the basis of the IBM XT/370 hardware emulator of the System 370 processor. Video game manufacturers used

2407-561: The WICAT 150, early Alpha Microsystems computers, Sage II / IV , Tandy 6000 / TRS-80 Model 16 , and Fortune 32:16 ; single-user workstations such as Hewlett-Packard 's HP 9000 Series 200 systems, the first Apollo/Domain systems, Sun Microsystems ' Sun-1 , and the Corvus Concept ; and graphics terminals like Digital Equipment Corporation 's VAXstation 100 and Silicon Graphics ' IRIS 1000 and 1200. Unix systems rapidly moved to

2490-566: The workstation machines opened new markets for graphics-based systems that the terminal-oriented minis could not even address. Minis retained a force for those using existing software products or those who required high-performance multitasking, but the introduction of newer operating systems based on Unix began to become highly practical replacements for these roles as well. For computational science , clusters of commodity PCs largely replaced minicomputers. Mini vendors began to rapidly disappear through this period. Data General responded to

2573-439: The 1990s in low-end printers. The 68000 was successful in the field of industrial control systems. Among the systems benefited from having a 68000 or derivative as their microprocessor were families of programmable logic controllers (PLCs) manufactured by Allen-Bradley , Texas Instruments and subsequently, following the acquisition of that division of TI, by Siemens . Users of such systems do not accept product obsolescence at

Freescale 683XX - Misplaced Pages Continue

2656-546: The 6800, as they felt the 8-bit designs were too limited to be the basis for new designs. The new system was influenced by the PDP-11 , the most popular minicomputer design of the era. At the time, a key concept in minis was the concept of an orthogonal instruction set , in which every operation was allowed to work on any sort of data. To feed the correct data into the internal units, MACSS made extensive use of microcode , essentially small programs in read only memory that gathered up

2739-450: The 68000 (including the 9400/9400A) can also perform fast Fourier transform functions on a waveform. The 683XX microcontrollers, based on the 68000 architecture, are used in networking and telecom equipment, television set-top boxes, laboratory and medical instruments, and even handheld calculators. The MC68302 and its derivatives have been used in many telecom products from Cisco, 3com, Ascend, Marconi, Cyclades and others. Past models of

2822-523: The 68000 as the backbone of many arcade games and home game consoles : Atari's Food Fight , from 1982, was one of the first 68000-based arcade games. Others included Sega 's System 16 , Capcom 's CP System and CPS-2 , and SNK 's Neo Geo . By the late 1980s, the 68000 was inexpensive enough to power home game consoles, such as Sega's Genesis console, and also the Sega CD attachment for it (a Sega CD system has three CPUs, two of them 68000s.) The 68000

2905-503: The 68000 for the IBM PC but chose the Intel 8088 ; however, IBM Instruments briefly sold the 68000-based IBM System 9000 laboratory computer systems. The 68k instruction set is particularly well suited to implement Unix, and the 68000 and its successors became the dominant CPUs for Unix-based workstations including Sun workstations and Apollo/Domain workstations. In 1981, Motorola introduced

2988-499: The 68000 itself had to succeed despite initially adopting a metal-gate design. Though the point about playing catch-up is clear, this could not have been an entirely accurate summary because Motorola's 1976 datasheets, predating the inception of the MACCS project, denote the majority of its 6800 family in silicon-gate. Indeed, Gunter's own 1979 article introducing the 68000 highlighted it as a silicon-gate depletion-mode HMOS design. Whatever

3071-472: The 68000 to respond quickly to interrupts (even in the worst case where all 8 data registers D0–D7 and 7 address registers A0–A6 needed to be saved, 15 registers in total), and yet large enough to make most calculations fast, because they could be done entirely within the processor without keeping any partial results in memory. (Note that an exception routine in supervisor mode can also save the user stack pointer A7, which would total 8 address registers. However,

3154-627: The 68341 and 68349 processors in 1993. The 68349, known as the Dragon I was designed to run the Magic Cap platform from General Magic for use in personal communicator devices. The 68341 was aimed at home entertainment and educational systems such as the Philips CD-i and in low-cost, low-power solutions generally. Motorola 68EC000 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand")

3237-667: The 68HC000 for use in the Macintosh Portable . Motorola replaced the MC68008 with the MC68HC001 in 1990. This chip resembles the 68HC000 in most respects, but its data bus can operate in either 16-bit or 8-bit mode, depending on the value of an input pin at reset. Thus, like the 68008, it can be used in systems with cheaper 8-bit memories. The later evolution of the 68000 focused on more modern embedded control applications and on-chip peripherals. The 68EC000 chip and SCM68000 core remove

3320-461: The ASR ;33. Another common difference was that most earlier small machines were not "general purpose", in that they were designed for a specific role like process control or accounting . On these machines, programming was generally carried out in their custom machine language , or even hard-coded into a plugboard , although some used a form of BASIC . DEC wrote, regarding their PDP-5, that it

3403-536: The Imagen Imprint-10 were controlled by external boards equipped with the 68000. The first HP LaserJet , introduced in 1984, came with a built-in 8 MHz 68000. Other printer manufacturers adopted the 68000, including Apple with its introduction of the LaserWriter in 1985, the first PostScript laser printer. The 68000 continued to be widely used in printers throughout the rest of the 1980s, persisting well into

Freescale 683XX - Misplaced Pages Continue

3486-612: The M6800 peripheral bus, and exclude the MOVE from SR instruction from user mode programs, making the 68EC000 and 68SEC000 the only 68000 CPUs not 100% object code compatible with previous 68000 CPUs when run in User Mode. When run in Supervisor Mode, there is no difference. In 1996, Motorola updated the standalone core with fully static circuitry, drawing only 2  μW in low-power mode, calling it

3569-725: The MC68000, the fastest version of the original HMOS chip, was not produced until the late 1980s. By the start of 1981, the 68k was winning orders in the high end, and Gunter began to approach Apple to win their business. At that time, the 68k sold for about $ 125 in quantity. In meetings with Steve Jobs , Jobs talked about using the 68k in the Apple Lisa , but stated "the real future is in this product that I'm personally doing. If you want this business, you got to commit that you'll sell it for $ 15." Motorola countered by offering to sell it at $ 55 at first, then step down to $ 35, and so on. Jobs agreed, and

3652-507: The MC68SEC000. Motorola ceased production of the HMOS MC68000, as well as the MC68008, MC68010, MC68330, and MC68340 in on June 1, 1996, but its spin-off company Freescale Semiconductor was still producing the MC68HC000, MC68HC001, MC68EC000, and MC68SEC000, as well as the MC68302 and MC68306 microcontrollers and later versions of the DragonBall family. The 68000's architectural descendants,

3735-466: The architects perform "design-ahead" so that when silicon technologies were available, Motorola had designs ready to implement and go to market. Many of these submodules have been carried forward into the Coldfire line of processors. The microcontrollers consist of a series of modules, connected by an internal bus: Other modules available on various processors in the 683xx family are: Motorola announced

3818-1282: The base software environment for the NonStop Servers, and has been extended to include support for Java and integration with popular development tools like Visual Studio and Eclipse . Later, Hewlett-Packard would split into HP and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. The NonStop products and the DEC products would then be sold by HPE. A variety of companies emerged that built turnkey systems around minicomputers with specialized software and, in many cases, custom peripherals that addressed specialized problems such as computer-aided design , computer-aided manufacturing , process control , manufacturing resource planning , and so on. Many if not most minicomputers were sold through these original equipment manufacturers and value-added resellers . Several pioneering computer companies first built minicomputers, such as DEC , Data General , and Hewlett-Packard (HP) (who now refers to its HP3000 minicomputers as "servers" rather than "minicomputers"). And although today's PCs and servers are clearly microcomputers physically, architecturally their CPUs and operating systems have developed largely by integrating features from minicomputers. In

3901-455: The changing market by focusing entirely on the high-performance file server market, embracing a role within large LANs that appeared resilient. This did not last; Novell NetWare rapidly pushed such solutions into niche roles, and later versions of Microsoft Windows did the same to Novell. DEC decided to move into the large-computer space instead, introducing the VAX 9000 mainframe in 1989, but it

3984-537: The cost of more software complexity. The interrupt controller can be as simple as a 74LS148 priority encoder, or may be part of a very large-scale integration (VLSI) peripheral chip such as the MC68901 Multi-Function Peripheral (used in the Atari ST range of computers and X68000 ), which also provides a UART , timer, and parallel I/O. Minicomputer A minicomputer , or colloquially mini ,

4067-469: The creation of an entire industry of minicomputer companies along Massachusetts Route 128 , including Data General , Wang Laboratories and Prime Computer . Other popular minis from the era were the HP 2100 , Honeywell 316 and TI-990 . Early minis had a variety of word sizes , with DEC's 12 and 18-bit systems being typical examples. The introduction and standardization of the 7-bit ASCII character set led to

4150-483: The data collection crews. Raytheon Data Systems RDS 704 and later RDS 500 were predominantly the systems of choice for nearly all the geophysical exploration as well as oil companies. At the launch of the MITS Altair 8800 in 1975, Radio Electronics magazine referred to the system as a "minicomputer", although the term microcomputer soon became usual for personal computers based on single-chip microprocessors . At

4233-679: The degree of Motorola's process and manufacturing deficits in the early days, the team was undeterred and would not compromise in its pursuit of a microprocessor with industry-leading performance. Formally introduced in September 1979, initial samples were released in February 1980, with production chips available over the counter in November. Initial speed grades were 4, 6, and 8  MHz . 10 MHz chips became available during 1981, and 12.5 MHz chips by June 1982. The 16.67 MHz "12F" version of

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4316-416: The dual stack pointer (A7 and supervisor-mode A7') design of the 68000 makes this normally unnecessary, except when a task switch is performed in a multitasking system.) Having the two types of registers allows one 32-bit address and one 16-bit data calculation to take place at the same time. This results in reduced instruction execution time as addresses and data can be processed in parallel. The 68000 has

4399-485: The early 1980s, such as DEC's VAX , Wang VS , and Hewlett-Packard's HP 3000 have long been discontinued without a compatible upgrade path. OpenVMS was ported to HP Alpha and Intel IA-64 ( Itanium ) CPU architectures, and now runs on x86-64 processors. Tandem Computers , which specialized in reliable large-scale computing, was acquired by Compaq in 1997, and in 2001 the combined entity merged with Hewlett-Packard . The NonStop Kernel-based NonStop product line

4482-654: The end of 1976. Crook formed the Motorola Advanced Computer System on Silicon (MACSS) project to build the design and hired Tom Gunter to be its principal architect. Gunter began forming his team in January 1977. The performance goal was set at 1 million instructions per second (MIPS). They wanted the design to not only win back microcomputer vendors like Apple Computer and Tandy , but also minicomputer companies like NCR and AT&T . The team decided to abandon an attempt at backward compatibility with

4565-644: The later 1970s. Most mini vendors introduced their own single-chip processors based on their own architecture and used these mostly in low-cost offerings while concentrating on their 32-bit systems. Examples include the Intersil 6100 single-chip PDP-8, DEC T-11 PDP-11, microNOVA and Fairchild 9440 Nova, and TMS9900 TI-990. By the early 1980s, the 16-bit market had all but disappeared as newer 32-bit microprocessors began to improve in performance. Those customers who required more performance than these offered had generally already moved to 32-bit systems by this time. But it

4648-421: The market. In order to compete, they set themselves the goal of being two times as powerful at the same cost, or one-half the cost with the same performance. Crook decided that they would attack the high-end of the market with the most powerful processor on the market. Another 16-bit would not do, their design would have to be bigger, and that meant having some 32-bit features. Crook had decided on this approach by

4731-423: The minicomputer class. Similar models using magnetic delay-line memory followed in the early 1960s. These machines, however, were essentially designed as small mainframes, using a custom chassis and often supporting only peripherals from the same company. In contrast, the machines that became known as minicomputers were often designed to fit into a standard chassis and deliberately designed to use common devices like

4814-526: The modern definition. Its introductory price of $ 18,500 (equivalent to $ 178,866 in 2023) places it in an entirely different market segment than earlier examples like the CDC 160. In contemporary terms, the PDP-8 was a runaway success, ultimately selling 50,000 examples. Follow-on versions using small scale integrated circuits further lowered the cost and size of the system. Its success led to widespread imitation, and

4897-531: The more capable later generations of the 68k line, which remained popular in that market throughout the 1980s. By the mid-1980s, falling production cost made the 68000 viable for use in personal computers starting with the Apple Lisa and Macintosh , and followed by the Amiga , Atari ST , and X68000 . The Sinclair QL microcomputer, along with its derivatives, such as the ICL One Per Desk business terminal,

4980-496: The move to 16-bit systems, with the late-1969 Data General Nova being a notable entry in this space. By the early 1970s, most minis were 16-bit, including DEC's PDP-11 . For a time, "minicomputer" was almost synonymous with "16-bit", as the larger mainframe machines almost always used 32-bit or larger word sizes. As integrated circuit design improved, especially with the introduction of the 7400-series integrated circuits , minicomputers became smaller, easier to manufacture, and as

5063-547: The new RISC approach promised performance levels well beyond the fastest minis, and even high-end mainframes. All that really separated micros from the mini market was storage and memory capacity. Both of these began to be addressed through the later 1980s; 1 MB of RAM became typical by around 1987, desktop hard drives rapidly pushed past the 100 MB range by 1990, and the introduction of inexpensive and easily deployable local area network (LAN) systems provided solutions for those looking for multi-user systems. The introduction of

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5146-523: The other 68000 CPUs) was used in the Jaleco arcade game Wild Pilot for input/output (I/O) processing. The 68000 has a 24-bit external address bus and two byte-select signals "replaced" A0. These 24 lines can therefore address 16 MB of physical memory with byte resolution. Address storage and computation uses 32 bits internally; however, the 8 high-order address bits are ignored due to the physical lack of device pins. This allows it to run software written for

5229-417: The release of the 1989 Mac IIci. The 68000 family stores multi-byte integers in memory in big-endian order. The CPU has eight 32-bit general-purpose data registers (D0-D7), and eight address registers (A0-A7). The last address register is the stack pointer , and assemblers accept the label SP as equivalent to A7. This was a good number of registers at the time in many ways. It was small enough to allow

5312-508: The required data, performed the operations and wrote out the results. MACSS was among the first to use this technique in a microprocessor. There was a large amount of support hardware for the 6800 that would remain useful, things like UARTs and similar interfacing systems. For this reason, the new design retained a bus protocol compatibility mode for existing 6800 peripheral devices. A chip with 32 data and 32 addressing pins would require 64 pins, plus more for power and other features. At

5395-415: The rest of the line despite being limited to a 16-bit wide external bus. After 45 years in production , the 68000 architecture is still in use. Motorola's first widely produced microprocessor was the 6800 , introduced in early 1974 and available in quantity late that year. The company set itself the goal of selling 25,000 units by September 1976, a goal they did meet. Although a capable design, it

5478-423: The same clock speeds. A further extended version, which exposes 31 bits of the address bus, was also produced in small quantities as the 68012 . To support lower-cost systems and control applications with smaller memory sizes, Motorola introduced the 8-bit compatible MC68008 , also in 1982. This is a 68000 with an 8-bit data bus and a smaller (20-bit) address bus. After 1982, Motorola devoted more attention to

5561-607: The same rate as domestic users, and it is entirely likely that despite having been installed over 20 years ago, many 68000-based controllers will continue in reliable service well into the 21st century. In a number of digital oscilloscopes from the 80s, the 68000 has been used as a waveform display processor; some models including the LeCroy 9400/9400A also use the 68000 as a waveform math processor (including addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of two waveforms/references/waveform memories), and some digital oscilloscopes using

5644-446: The same time, minis began to move upward in size. Although several 24 and 32-bit minis had entered the market earlier, it was DEC's 1977 VAX , which they referred to as a superminicomputer , or supermini, that caused the mini market to move en-masse to 32-bit architectures. This provided ample headroom even as single-chip 16-bit microprocessors like the TMS 9900 and Zilog Z8000 appeared in

5727-465: The software context, the relatively simple OSs for early microcomputers were usually inspired by minicomputer OSs (such as CP/M 's similarity to Digital's single user OS/8 and RT-11 and multi-user RSTS time-sharing system). Also, the multiuser OSs of today are often either inspired by, or directly descended from, minicomputer OSs. UNIX was originally a minicomputer OS, while the Windows NT kernel ,

5810-539: The term "first minicomputer". Most computing histories point to the 1964 introduction of Digital Equipment Corporation 's (DEC) 12-bit PDP-8 as the first minicomputer. Some of this is no doubt due to DEC's widespread use of the term starting in the mid-1960s. Smaller systems, including those from DEC like the PDP-5 and LINC , had existed prior to this point, but it was the PDP-8 combination of small size, general purpose orientation and low price that puts it firmly within

5893-422: The time, 64-pin dual inline package (DIP)s were "large, heavy-cost" systems and "just terrible", making that the largest they could consider. To make it fit, Crook selected a hybrid design, with a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) but 16-bit components implementing it, like the arithmetic logic unit (ALU). The external interface was reduced to 16 data pins and 24 for addresses, allowing it all to fit in

5976-403: The time, microcomputers were 8-bit single-user, relatively simple machines running simple program-launcher operating systems like CP/M or MS-DOS , while minis were much more powerful systems that ran full multi-user, multitasking operating systems, such as VMS and Unix . The Tandem Computers NonStop product line shipped its first fully fault-tolerant cluster computer in 1976. Around

6059-417: The two-decade lifetime of the minicomputer class (1965–1985), almost 100 companies formed and only a half dozen remained. When single-chip CPU microprocessors appeared, beginning with the Intel 4004 in 1971, the term "minicomputer" came to mean a machine that lies in the middle range of the computing spectrum, in between the smallest mainframe computers and the microcomputers . The term "minicomputer"

6142-501: The ubiquitous Teletype Model 33 ASR. They usually took up one or a few 19-inch rack cabinets, compared with the large mainframes that could fill a room. In terms of relative computing power compared to contemporary mainframes, small systems that were similar to minicomputers had been available from the 1950s. In particular, there was an entire class of drum machines , like the UNIVAC 1101 and LGP-30 , that share some features of

6225-461: The upper address byte, or used it for purposes other than addressing, could fail on 32-bit 68000 implementations. For example, early (pre-7.0) versions of Apple's Mac OS used the high byte of memory-block master pointers to hold flags such as locked and purgeable . Later versions of the OS moved the flags to a nearby location, and Apple began shipping computers which had " 32-bit clean " ROMs beginning with

6308-463: Was "the world’s first commercially produced minicomputer". It meets most definitions of "mini" in terms of power and size, but was designed and built to be used as an instrumentation system in labs, not as a general-purpose computer. Many similar examples of small special-purpose machines exist from the early 1960s, including the UK Ferranti Argus and Soviet UM-1NKh. The CDC 160 , circa 1960,

6391-485: Was a flop in the market and disappeared after almost no sales. The company then attempted to enter the workstation and server markets with the DEC Alpha , but was too late to save the company and they eventually sold their remains to Compaq in 1998. By the end of the decade all of the classic vendors were gone; Data General , Prime , Computervision , Honeywell , and Wang , failed, merged, or were bought out. Today, only

6474-466: Was built using the latest 5-inch wafer sizes and Intel's HMOS process with a 3.5  μm feature size. This was an investment aimed at catching the competition: even upstart semiconductor companies such as Zilog and MOS Technology had introduced CPUs fabricated on depletion-mode NMOS logic before Motorola did. In fact, Motorola may have substantially lagged contemporaries in phasing out enhancement mode and metal gate, with Gunter recollecting that

6557-568: Was eclipsed by more powerful designs, such as the Zilog Z80 , and less expensive designs, such as the MOS Technology 6502 . By late 1976, the sales book was flat and the division was only saved by a project for General Motors that turned into a huge product line for engine control and other tasks. By the time the 6800 was introduced, a small number of 16-bit designs had come to market. These were generally modeled on minicomputer platforms like

6640-474: Was not long before this market also began to come under threat; the Motorola 68000 offered a significant percentage of the performance of a typical mini in a desktop platform. True 32-bit processors like the National Semiconductor NS32016 , Motorola 68020 and Intel 80386 soon followed. By the mid-1980s, high-end microcomputers offered CPU performance equal to low-end and mid-range minis, and

6723-417: Was re-ported from MIPS processors to Itanium-based processors branded as ' HP Integrity NonStop Servers'. As in the earlier migration from stack machines to MIPS microprocessors, all customer software was carried forward without source changes. Integrity NonStop continues to be HP's answer for the extreme scaling needs of its very largest customers. The NSK operating system, now termed NonStop OS , continues as

6806-736: Was the most commercially important utilisation of the 68008. Helix Systems (in Missouri, United States) designed an extension to the SWTPC SS-50 bus , the SS-64, and produced systems built around the 68008 processor. While the adoption of RISC and x86 displaced the 68000 series as desktop/workstation CPU, the processor found substantial use in embedded applications. By the early 1990s, quantities of 68000 CPUs could be purchased for less than 30  USD per part. The 68000 also saw great success as an embedded controller. As early as 1981, laser printers such as

6889-453: Was working on a 16-bit extension of their 8080 series, which would emerge as the Intel 8086 , and had heard rumors of a 16-bit Zilog Z80 , which became the Z8000 . These would use new design techniques that would eliminate the problems seen in earlier 16-bit systems. Motorola knew that if they launched a product similar to the 8086, within 10% of its capabilities, Intel would outperform them in

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