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A User-Oriented Family of Minicomputers

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A User-Oriented Family of Minicomputers )BER 1974 iI © Copr. 1949-1998 Hewlett-Packard Co. A User-Oriented Family of Minicomputers HP's minicomputer section manager discusses the philosophy behind the design of this new computer series. by John M. Stedman WHAT DO MINICOMPUTER USERS want? In system application may require 128K words of main setting design objectives for HP's new 21 MX memory today, with the capability of expanding as Series minicomputers, we tried to make the objec additional needs arise. And it shouldn't be necessary tives conform as closely as possible to the answers to to trade off physical memory space for I/O controller this question, as we saw them. space. Minicomputer applications have broadened tre mendously in the last few years. One finds minicom puters today solving problems that only a few years Cover: The HP 21 MX Series ago would have required a large expensive computer is a family of advanced system or a dedicated system designed to solve one minicomputers featuring particular problem. In more and more cases a mini modular design, a choice of computer turns out to be the best solution to a problem. semiconductor memory systems, user-micropro- What Do Users Want? grammable processors, and In general, a minicomputer user wants the most customized instruction sets, cost-effective solution to his problem. He would like and a power system that has to have the solution as quickly as possible, and not be unusual immunity to substandard electrical con required to design special hardware to do the job. In ditions. The memory systems use the new 4K addition, he wants a solution closely matched to his RAMs, a few of which are shown here. specific application, and doesn't want to pay for capabilities he doesn't need or want. In this Issue: Minicomputers should be able to match closely to A User-Oriented Family of Minicom the number of peripheral devices required by the par puters, by John M. Stedman page 2 ticular application. If the user needs only four he Microprogrammable Central Proces should not have to pay for twelve I/O slots. However, sor Adapts Easily to Special User it is desirable that the minicomputer be extendable, Needs, by Philip Gordon and Jacob R. allowing a user to expand the number of peripherals Jacobs . page 7 at a later date if this need arises. Testing the 21 MX Processor, by Cleaborn C. Physical size is also important to some users. They Riggins and Richard L. Hammons. page 10. don't want to have half a rack filled up with the CPU, All Semiconductor Memory Selected power supply, I/O system, and so on, especially if for New Minicomputer Series, by they can do the same job in just a few inches of rack Robert J. Frankenberg page 15 space. The Million-Word Minicomputer Main Memory, Different systems require different amounts of by John S. Elward, page 19 main memory, and again users don't want to be pay A Computer Power System for Severe ing for capability they don't really need. A dedicated Operating Conditions, by Richard C. system application may require only up to 32K words Van Brunt page 21 of main memory. Another information management Printed m U S A E Hewlett-Packard Company. 1974 © Copr. 1949-1998 Hewlett-Packard Co. Fig.1. The 21 MX Series now con sists of two computers-M/10 and M/20-with different levels of capability. Both are user-micro- programmable and have semi conductor main memory. Software for many minicomputer systems is being phone switching or measurement/control appli written in higher-level languages, such as FORTRAN, cations where minimum down time is essential. In ALGOL, and BASIC, so it's essential for these appli all other areas, however, it is certainly desirable to cations to have a good set of compilers or interpreters have a reliable minicomputer. And in the event that and associated support software. For other appli a component does fail, it should be easy to replace cations the best solution is to write the applications the failed subsystem and get the minicomputer back software in machine or assembly language. In this on the air as soon as possible. case, it is desirable to have a powerful, yet easy to use For many applications, reliable operation even instruction set. under abnormal power-line conditions is also im Capabilities like decimal arithmetic instructions portant. The minicomputer should be able to operate for applications such as information management, normally if the power line voltage dips as much as and extended arithmetic and floating point arithme 25% indefinitely, and be able to withstand complete tic instructions for computational requirements, loss of line power for short periods of time. Some should be easy and inexpensive to add to minicom applications also require power-fail-auto-restart puters, if they are not standard. Again, a user should capability; an example is a minicomputer monitoring not have to trade memory or I/O space for these data in an unattended location. In addition to these capabilities. considerations, the computer should be able to run In some specialized applications the user's pro normally overa wide range of temperature, humidity, gram spends much of its time doing a certain set of and vibration conditions. calculations or a certain operation over and over. If overall system response time is important and pro The New Family portional to this, such as in a real-time measurement As a result of these considerations, our project team or control system, it is desirable that the user be able created not just one new minicomputer, but a family to add instructions easily, thereby replacing whole of processors, the 21MX Series. All of the members of operations or subroutines and making them run this family are compatible with assembly-language much faster than the equivalents in assembly lan programs written for the earlier HP 2100A,1 and are guage. In other words it is desirable to be able to tailor also I/O compatible with previous HP machines. This the minicomputer to the user's custom requirements. protects the large amount of investment in these Reliability is of importance to any minicomputer earlier minicomputers — over 2000 man-years of soft user. It is especially important in such areas as tele ware and over 70 peripheral interfaces supported. © Copr. 1949-1998 Hewlett-Packard Co. extended-arithmetic and single-precision floating The Value of User point instructions. It takes only 5% inches of rack Microprogrammability space, and its applications are expected to include such dedicated system areas as satellite navigation or User microprogrammability can be an extremely valuable processing of oil exploration data. feature. It allows the user to customize the computer, dramati Designed for larger systems applications, the cally or performance, increasing software security, or 2 l-M/20 contains nine powered I/O slots and can hold adding features that are important to a particular application but are not offered in the base instruction set. For example, 65K words of memory in the mainframe, extendable benchmark programs run on an HP 21 MX Computer with the much further via memory extenders. The dynamic HP 12977 A Fast FORTRAN Processor, an optional microcode mapping system, optional on the 2 l-M/20 , is one of the package, show performance increases of up to 28 times over many significant contributions in the 21 MX family, the same programs in software. Typical FORTRAN programs run allowing the 2 l-M/20 to be used in such applications four per six times faster using the 12977A. Similar dramatic per formance increases are expected in user applications. as real-time measurement or control where quick Input/output is another area that can benefit from special mi access to large amounts of data stored in main croprogramming. Since I/O is under direct microcode control memory is essential. in 21 MX Computers, the application of microcoding for higher throughput in l/O-intensive applications should be very prof Design Contributions itable. Several companies concerned about easy transportability of Lowering the cost of these processors significantly their sophisticated application programs are now considering was a key goal of the design team, along with in changing their software programs to microcoded subroutines creasing their capabilities in several areas. Solid- executed as machine instructions from fixed control store. The state memory, specifically the 4K MOS RAM, was 21 MX has 51 2 macroinstruction codes reserved for new instruc chosen as the key component of main memory for tions, so this approach is viable for a large number of routines. Implementing routines in firmware is not a foolproof protection several reasons, including lower cost, lower power, mechanism against software pirating, but it does make the job higher density, and potentially great increases in much more difficult. reliability. This decision had to be made before these Microprogramming of features useful in specific application RAMs were available in production quantities, so environments, but not offered in the base 21 MX instruction set, close relationships were established with several can speed execution, simplify programming, or provide useful new architectural features. For instance, certain advantages of vendors of these components while they were still in a stack-oriented computer, such as subroutine linking and development. This allowed design of the minicom parameter storage, may be easily and inexpensively incorpo puter family to proceed while vendors were still rated into the 21 MX family by user microprogramming. Two in building up their capabilities to produce reliable structions called PUSH and POP use the A accumulator as the parts in volume. source and destination register to and from the memory stack.
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