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The ND-500 was a 32-bit superminicomputer delivered in 1981 by Norsk Data. It relied on a ND-100 to do housekeeping tasks and run the OS, SINTRAN III. [1] A configuration could feature up to four ND-500 CPUs in a shared-memory configuration.
The ND-500 architecture lived through four distinct implementations. Each implementation was sold under a variety of different model numbers.
ND also sold multiprocessor configurations, naming them ND-580/n and an ND-590n, where n represented the number of CPUs in a given configuration, 2, 3, or 4.
Sold as the ND-500, ND-520, ND-540, and ND-560.
Sold as the ND-570, ND-570/CX, and ND-570/ACX.
A 28-bit version of the ND-500 machine. Pins were snipped on the backplane, removing its status as a superminicomputer, allowing it to legally pass through the CoCom embargo.
Sold as the ND-5200, ND-5400, ND-5500, ND-5700, and ND-5800. The ND-120 CPU line, which constituted the ND-100 side of most ND-5000 computers, was named Delilah. As the 5000 line progressed in speed, the dual-arch ND-100/500 configuration increasingly became bottlenecked by all input/output (I/O) having to go through the ND-100.
Sold as the ND-5830 and ND-5850. The Rallar processor consisted of two main VLSI gate arrays, KUSK (En: Jockey) and GAMP (En: Horse).
LED was a programmer's source-code editor by Norsk Data running on the ND-500 computers running Sintran III. It featured automatic indenting, pretty-printing of source code, and integration with the compiler environment. It was sold as an advanced alternative to PED. Several copies exist, and it is installed on the NODAF public access ND-5700.
In 1982–83, Logica PLC in London undertook a project, on behalf of ND, to port Unix Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) 4.2 to the ND-500. A C compiler from Luleå University College in Northern Sweden was used. The goal was to port Unix BSD to the ND-500 and use the ND-100 running Sintran-III as the front end. Thus, all I/O had to go through the ND-100 which proved very inefficient. For example, running vi on the ND-500 brought the ND-100 to its knees. The purpose of the effort was so that ND could sell the 500 to the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), who were buying VAXes from Digital Equipment Corporation. But the ND-500 was unable to meet CERN's goals. Although the ND-500 processor was very fast for its time, it couldn't compete with the superior VAX I/O architecture.
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
The PDP–11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the late 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sold, making it one of DEC's most successful product lines. The PDP-11 is considered by some experts to be the most popular minicomputer.
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Convex Computer Corporation was a company that developed, manufactured and marketed vector minisupercomputers and supercomputers for small-to-medium-sized businesses. Their later Exemplar series of parallel computing machines were based on the Hewlett-Packard (HP) PA-RISC microprocessors, and in 1995, HP bought the company. Exemplar machines were offered for sale by HP for some time, and Exemplar technology was used in HP's V-Class machines.
Norsk Data was a minicomputer manufacturer located in Oslo, Norway. Existing from 1967 to 1998, it had its most active period from the early 1970s to the late 1980s. At the company's peak in 1987, it was the second largest company in Norway and employed over 4,500 people.
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Nord-10 was a medium-sized general-purpose 16-bit minicomputer designed for multilingual time-sharing applications and for real-time multi-program systems, produced by Norsk Data. It was introduced in 1973. The later follow up model, Nord-10/S, introduced in 1975, introduced CPU cache, paging, and other miscellaneous improvements.
The Nord-100 was a 16-bit minicomputer series made by Norsk Data, introduced in 1979. It shipped with the Sintran III operating system, and the architecture was based on, and backward compatible with, the Nord-10 line.
The Orion was a series of 32-bit super-minicomputers designed and produced in the 1980s by High Level Hardware Limited (HLH), a company based in Oxford, UK. The company produced four versions of the machine:
The Sun-2 series of UNIX workstations and servers was launched by Sun Microsystems in November 1983. As the name suggests, the Sun-2 represented the second generation of Sun systems, superseding the original Sun-1 series. The Sun-2 series used a 10 MHz Motorola 68010 microprocessor with a proprietary Sun-2 Memory Management Unit (MMU), which enabled it to be the first Sun architecture to run a full virtual memory UNIX implementation, SunOS 1.0, based on 4.1BSD. Early Sun-2 models were based on the Intel Multibus architecture, with later models using VMEbus, which continued to be used in the successor Sun-3 and Sun-4 families.
DEC 3000 AXP was the name given to a series of computer workstations and servers, produced from 1992 to around 1995 by Digital Equipment Corporation. The DEC 3000 AXP series formed part of the first generation of computer systems based on the 64-bit Alpha AXP architecture. Supported operating systems for the DEC 3000 AXP series were DEC OSF/1 AXP and OpenVMS AXP.
Systems Engineering Laboratories was a manufacturer of minicomputers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It was one of the first 32-bit realtime computer system manufacturers. Realtime computers are used for process control and monitoring.
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Norsk Data (ND) was a Norwegian manufacturer of minicomputers which operated between 1967 and 1992. The company was established as A/S Nordata – Norsk Data-Elektronikk on 7 July 1967 and took into use the Norsk Data brand in 1975. The company was founded by Lars Monrad-Krohn, Rolf Skår and Per Bjørge, three computer engineers working at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment which had just built the minicomputer SAM 2. ND's first contract was the delivery of a Nord-1 computer to Norcontrol. Initially in competition with Kongsberg, ND started delivering computers to Norwegian institutions. By 1972 the company had developed Sintran operating system, the 32-bit Nord-5 and a time sharing system.
The Research and Development Network in Norway or FUNN was fourteen computing centers established in regional districts in Norway established by Norsk Data (ND) and the Ministry of Trade and Industry in 1989. These were located in Ålesund, Alta, Bø, Gjøvik, Grimstad, Kirkenes, Kristiansund, Mo i Rana, Narvik, Sarpsborg, Sogndal, Steinkjer, Stord and Tromsø. Each had two Norsk Data-built minicomputers, one running Sintran III and one running Unix. Participating agencies included the Regional Development Fund, the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development, the Norwegian Telecommunications Administration (NTA), and the Royal Norwegian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (NTNF).
The PowerNode 9080 was a dual processor 32-bit Superminicomputer produced by Fort Lauderdale, Florida based electronics company Gould Electronics in the 1980s. Its UTX/32 4.3BSD Berkeley Unix-based operating system was one of the first multi-processor shared memory implementations of Unix, although the processors operated in a Master-Slave configuration with a Mutual Exclusion (MutEx) lock on all manipulations on Kernel tables. The second processor, called IPU, left all I/O operations to the main CPU. Machines could be configured for either single or dual processor operation. At launch in the mid-eighties the PowerNode 9080 was sold at $385,000.