NCR/32

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NCR/32
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Marketed by NCR Corporation
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The NCR/32 VLSI Processor family was a 32-bit microprocessor architecture and chipset developed by NCR Corporation in the early 1980s. Generally used in minicomputer systems, it was noteworthy for being externally microprogrammable. [1] [2]

Contents

History

NCR announced the release of its NCR/32 architecture, comprising an initial four-chip set, in the third quarter of 1982. [3] The Central Processor Chip included an external microcode bus that let a designer create custom instructions for specific applications.

This feature was used to develop microcode that allowed the NCR/32 to emulate NCR's earlier mainframe computers, or an IBM System/370. [4] : 1–5 

The design also enabled high-level languages, such as Prolog and polyFORTH, to be executed directly from custom instructions in the external microcontrol store. [5] [6]

Both the NCR/32 processor and some products that used it have been called reduced instruction set computer (RISC) systems, although the description has been debated; [7] [8] [9] the original Berkeley RISC and Stanford MIPS research programs did not complete until 1984, and avoiding the use of microcode was one of the key RISC design principles. [10] [11] [12]

NCR used the processor architecture in certain models of their own computer systems, communications peripherals, and at least one board-level product.

Some of the designers of the NCR/32 left NCR for a new company, Celerity Computing, which used the NCR/32 in its own minicomputer designs, running a version of the University of California at Berkeley's Unix Release 4.2. [11] [13]

Chipset

The chipset for the NCR/32 family includes the following devices:

Features

The NCR/32-000 CPC was the cornerstone of the architecture; all of the other devices were optional. The CPC consists of 40,000 transistors, and was originally fabricated in a 3  micron NMOS process. The device supports two levels of microcode: vertical microcode, stored in an external 128K-byte Instruction Storage Unit (ISU), and horizontal microcode, stored in an internal Read-only memory (ROM) encoding 179 operations in a set of 95-bit wide words. The CPC accesses the ISU over a 16-bit wide Instruction Storage Unit Bus (ISUBUS), feeding a 3-stage microinstruction pipeline. Internally, the CPC has a 32-bit wide Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU), and 16 32-bit general purpose registers. The processor can address up to 4 GB of direct virtual memory, and 16 MB of direct real memory over a 32-bit wide Processor Memory Bus (PMBUS). The base clock frequency of the CPC is 13.3 MHz. With its two-phase, non-overlapping clock, each machine cycle takes two "ticks", yielding a cycle time of 150 nanoseconds (nS). 90% of the CPC's microinstructions complete in a single cycle. [1] [4] [14]

A revised version of the CPC was released later, with device geometry reduced from 3 to 2 microns [15] Cycle time on higher-performance NCR 10000 systems was down to 110  nS. [16]

The NCR/32-010 ATC provides advanced memory management services such as address translation, access protection, memory-refresh control, and error-checking and correction (ECC). It contains sixteen translation registers which handle mapping of 32-bit or 24-bit virtual addresses into 24-bit physical addresses, with page sizes of 1K, 2K, or 4K bytes. [4] [14]

The NCR/32-020 EAC accelerates the execution of arithmetic operations, performing IBM-compatible single- and double-precision binary and floating-point arithmetic, packed and unpacked decimal storage, and format conversions. [14]

The NCR/32-500 SIC interfaces the PMBUS to slower peripherals and other systems. The NCR/32-580 SIT and NCR/32-590 SIR perform data format conversions. The SIC/SIT/SIR combination can operate in one of two modes: Data Link Control or Local Area Network. [14] [1]

Applications

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References

  1. 1 2 3 NCR Microelectronics Short-Form Catalog—1985 (PDF). Dayton, Ohio, U.S.A.: NCR Corporation. 1985.
  2. ↑ Bond, John (1 June 1984). "Architectural Advances Spur 32-Bit Micros". Computer Design . pp. 125–136.
  3. ↑ Hannum, David L. (December 1983). "microREVIEW". IEEE Micro . Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. pp. 66–68.
  4. 1 2 3 NCR/32 General Information (PDF). Dayton, Ohio, U.S.A.: NCR Corporation. 1984.
  5. ↑ Fagin, Barry; Patt, Yale; Srini, Vason; Despain, Alvin (December 1985). "Compiling Prolog Into Microcode: A Case Study Using the NCR/32-000". Proceedings of the 18th annual workshop on Microprogramming. MICRO-18. Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 79–88. doi:10.1145/18927.18914.
  6. ↑ McBride, Michael L. (January 1984). "Technical Notes — polyFORTH on the NCR/32" (PDF). The Journal of Forth Application and Research. 2 (1): 77–84.
  7. ↑ Masters, Clark (18 November 2021). "Oral History of Clark Masters" (PDF). Computer History Museum (Interview). Interviewed by Uday Kapoor. Escondido, California.
  8. 1 2 MacNicol, Gregory (March 1985). "A Risky New Architecture For The Future?" (PDF). Digital Design . pp. 92–98.
  9. ↑ Kern, Dr. Ralf (January–February 1989). "Die Mikroprozessor-Story" [The Microprocessor Story](PDF). Prisma (in German). No. 1. Computerclub Deutschland e.V. pp. 7–12.
  10. 1 2 3 "NCR Moves Mid-Range System 10000 Up-Market with Model 85". techmonitor.ai. 2 May 1990.
  11. 1 2 3 "Celerity Shuts Up Shop, Shedding 70% of its Workforce". techmonitor.ai. 7 February 1988.
  12. ↑ "FPS Japan to Capitalise on its Parent's Acquisition". 27 Sep 1988. Archived from the original on 2021-04-19. Retrieved 2023-08-06.
  13. ↑ "Systems & Peripherals — Celerity: 32-bit engineering unit faster than VAX-11". Computerworld . 1984-09-17. p. 69.
  14. 1 2 3 4 Mateosian, Richard (January 1984). "1984, the Year of the 32-bit Microprocessor" (PDF). Byte . Vol. 9, no. 1. pp. 134–150.
  15. 1 2 3 4 Boucher, Henri. Catalogue informatique de Henri Boucher (PDF). Vol. C.
  16. ↑ "System 10000 Model 65, Model 75 and Model 85". NCR Products and Systems Pocket Digest (PDF). NCR Corporation. January 1991. pp. 51–55.
  17. ↑ "Modell 9300 bietet eine maximale Hauptspeicherkapazität von 4 MB: NCR-Computer mit neuem 32-Bit-Chip" [Model 9300 offers a maximum memory capacity of 4 MB: NCR computer with new 32-bit chip]. www.computerwoche.de (in German). 1 April 1983.
  18. ↑ "NCR Marries Its Tower Unix Boxes With Fault-Tolerant 9800". techmonitor.ai. 16 September 1987.
  19. ↑ Allison, Andrew (May 1987). "Multiprocessors Boost System Power" (PDF). Mini-Micro Systems . Vol. XX, no. 5. Cahners. pp. 105–117.
  20. ↑ "New Products — NCR claims seamless PC integration and transparent networking for new System 10000" (PDF). Computer . The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. May 1988. p. 94.
  21. ↑ Bozman, Jean S. (7 March 1988). "NCR to show next mini line". Computerworld . Vol. XXII, no. 10. p. 1.
  22. ↑ "NCR Integrates Mid-Range NCR 10000 With MS-DOS Computing". techmonitor.ai. 14 March 1988.
  23. ↑ "Systems & Peripherals — NCR adds 32-bit board-level processor". Computerworld . Vol. XVII, no. 50. 10 December 1984. p. 105.
  24. ↑ Dix, John (4 March 1985). "NCR Comten rolls out processor, tools". Computerworld . Vol. XIX, no. 9. pp. 77, 78.
  25. ↑ "Microbytes — Nanobytes" (PDF). Byte . April 1984. p. 10.
  26. ↑ "Honeywell-NCR". The New York Times . 8 February 1984. p. D-4.
  27. ↑ "Company Profiles — 15 Honeywell Inc" (PDF). Datamation . 1 June 1985. p. 70.

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