Re: Is microprocessor an integrated circuit???

From: Thaas (mysig_at_sprynet.com)
Date: 01/29/05 

Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2005 20:11:55 GMT

On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 10:37:28 -0800, John Larkin
<jjSNIPlarkin@highTHISlandPLEASEtechnology.XXX> wrote:

>On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 14:18:42 GMT, Thaas <mysig@sprynet.com> wrote:
>
>>In the 1970s minicomputers had what are now retroactively defined as
>>"complex" instructions to perform operations like say allocating a
>>free page of physical memory to a program's virtual address space. In
>>the Modcomp IV this was the AMEM instruction. Two other "complex"
>>instructions in that machine were the MMRB (Move Memory to Register
>>Block) and MRBM (Move Register Block to Memory).
>>
>
>The VAX had POLY: evaluate a polynomial. Most of the transcendental
>math functions were microcoded, too.
>
>John
In 1981 Modcomp's president went to a California design firm for the
design of their fully 32-bit machine, the 32/85. I remember the
section of firmware for the transcendental instructions that were
added to that machine were entitled "Transcendental Meditations" by
the programmer.

He was in a hurry for the project to end because he was scheduled to
attempt Mount Everest that year. Name of Igor Mamadlian IIRC.

Earlier machines implemented the Floating Point instructions on a
separate microcoded processor board. The I/O processors were also
separate processor boards. The Space Shuttle launch control system
uses Modcomp computers with extra customized CPU boards that are used
to communicate with other computers in the system through the 64KB
Common Data Buffer.

I designed the CPU of Modcomp's 9250, the gate array version of the
32/85 design. Reduced six 14.5" by 19" boards to one. The
Instruction Stream Processor was one 55K-gate standard cell. The
Memory Management Control used one gate array. The Data Cache
Controller was implemented in two identical gate arrays.

The WCS was implemented in SRAM SIPs as was the register block
storage which also held the constants for those trancendentals among
other things. All external to the ISP ASIC.

We never called any Modcomp minicomputer or CPU board or even the ISPs
of our gate array designs microprocessors. Gee, I guess I should
update my resume. According to Bradley I've been designing the damn
things for years! Shucks folks! I've designed microprocessors in
wire-wrap! 

-- 
Thaas

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