NEC V60[2][1] is a CISC[7] processor manufactured by NEC starting in 1986.[8] It was the first 32-bit general-purpose microprocessor commercially available in Japan.[9]
Based on a relatively traditional design for the period,[10][11][12][13][14] the V60 was a radical departure from NEC's previous, 16-bit V–series processor, the V20-V50,[15] which were based on the Intel 8086 model,[7] although the V60 had the ability to emulate the V20/V30.[1]:§10
According to NEC's documentation, this computer architectural change was due to the increasing demands for, and the diversity of, high-level programming languages. Such trends called for a processor with both improved performance, achieved by doubling the bus width to 32 bits, and with greater flexibility facilitated by having a large number of general-purpose registers.[2][1] These were common features of RISC chips.[16] At the time, a transition from CISC to RISC seemed to bring many benefits for emerging markets.
Today, RISC chips are common, and CISC designs—such as Intel's x86 and the 80486—which have been mainstream for several decades, internally adopt RISC features in their microarchitectures.[17][18] According to Pat Gelsinger, binary backward compatibility for legacy software is more important than changing the ISA.[19]
Overview
Instruction set
The V60 (a.k.a. μPD70616) retained a CISC architecture.[20] Its manual describes their architecture as having "features of high-end mainframe and supercomputers", with a fully orthogonal instruction set that includes non-uniform-length instructions, memory-to-memory operations that include string manipulation, and complex operand-addressing schemes.[1][2][16]
Family
The V60 operates as a 32-bit processor internally, while externally providing 16-bit data, and 24-bit address, buses. In addition, the V60 has 32 32-bit general-purpose registers.[1]:§1 Its basic architecture is used in several variants. The V70 (μPD70632), released in 1987, provides 32-bit external buses. Launched in 1989, the V80 (μPD70832)[21] is the culmination of the series: having on-chip caches, a branch predictor, and less reliance on microcode for complex operations.[22]
Software
The operating systems developed for the V60-V80 series are generally oriented toward real-time operations. Several OSs were ported to the series, including real-time versions of Unix and I-TRON.[23][24]
All three processors have the FRM (Functional Redundancy Monitoring) synchronous multiple modular lockstep mechanism, which enables fault-tolerant computer systems. It requires multiple devices of the same model, one of which then operates in "master mode", while the other devices listen to the master device, in "checker mode". If two or more devices simultaneously output different results via their "fault output" pins, a majority-voting decision can be taken by external circuits. In addition, a recovery method for the mismatched instruction—either "roll-back by retry" or "roll-forward by exception"—can be selected via an external pin.[27][28][1]:§11[21][29][30]:§3–229,266
Pin Name
I/O
Function
BMODE (FRM)
Input
Select the normal bus (master) mode or FRM operating (checker) mode
BLOCK (MSMAT)
Output
Master output requesting bus lock, i.e. freezing bus operation Checker output indicating a mismatch has been detected
BFREZ
Input
Assertion for freezing bus operation
RT/EP
Input
Selecting input for "roll-back by retry" or "roll-forward by exception"
V60
The work on V60 processor began in 1982 with about 250 engineers under the leadership of Yoichi Yano,[31] and the processor debuted in February 1986.[32] It had a six-stage pipeline, built-in memory-management unit, and floating-point arithmetic. It was manufactured using a two-layer aluminum metal CMOS process technology, under a 1.5μmdesign rule, to implement 375,000 transistors on a 13.9 × 13.8 mm2 die.[8][33] It operates at 5V and was initially packaged in a 68-pin PGA.[34] The first version ran at 16MHz and attained 3.5 MIPS.[33] Its sample price at launch was set at ¥100,000 ($588.23). It entered full-scale production in August 1986.[33]
Sega employed this processor for most of its arcade game sets in the 1990s; both the Sega System 32 and the Sega Model 1 architectures used V60 as their main CPU. (The latter used the lower-cost μPD70615 variant,[35] which doesn't implement V20/V30 emulation and FRM.[36][37]) The V60 was also used as the main CPU in the SSV arcade architecture—so named because it was developed jointly by Seta, Sammy, and Visco.[38] Sega originally considered using a 16MHz V60 as the basis for its Sega Saturn console; but after receiving word that the PlayStation employed a 33.8MHz MIPSR3000A processor, instead chose the dual-SH-2 design for the production model.[39]
In 1988, NEC released a kit called PS98-145-HMW[40] for Unix enthusiasts. The kit contained a V60 processor board that could be plugged into selected models of the PC-9800 computer series and a distribution of their UNIX System V port, the PC-UX/VRel 2.0 (V60), on 15 8-inch floppy disks. The suggested retail price for this kit was 450,000 Yen.[40] NEC-group companies themselves intensively employed the V60 processor. Their telephone circuit switcher (exchange), which was one of the first intended targets, used V60. In 1991, they expanded their word processor products line with Bungou Mini (文豪ミニ in Japanese) series 5SX, 7SX, and 7SD, which used the V60 for fast outline font processing, while the main system processor was a 16MHz NEC V33.[41][42] In addition, V60 microcode variants were employed in NEC's MS-4100 minicomputer series, which was the fastest one in Japan at that time.[43][44][45]
The V70 (μPD70632) improved on the V60 by increasing the external buses to 32 bits, equal to the internal buses. It was also manufactured in 1.5μm with a two-metal layer process. Its 14.35 × 14.24 mm2 die had 385,000 transistors and was packaged in a 132-pin ceramic PGA. Its MMU had support for demand paging. Its floating-point unit was IEEE 754 compliant.[29] The 20MHz version attained a peak performance of 6.6 MIPS and was priced, at launch in August 1987, at ¥100,000 ($719.42). The initial production capacity was 20,000 units per month.[46] A later report describes it as fabricated in 1.2-micrometer CMOS on a 12.23 × 12.32 mm2 die.[21] The V70 had a two-cycle non-pipeline (T1-T2) external bus system, whereas that of the V60 operated at 3 or 4 cycles (T1-T3/T4).[21][2] Of course, the internal units were pipelined.
The V80 (μPD70832)[21] was launched in the spring of 1989. By incorporating on-chip caches and a branch predictor, it was declared NEC's 486 by Computer Business Review.[58][59] The performance of the V80 was two to four times than that of the V70, depending on application. For example, compared with V70, the V80 had a 32-bit hardware multiplier that reduced the number of cycles required to complete an integer-multiplication machine-instruction from 23 to 9. (For more detailed differences, see the hardware architecture section below.) The V80 was manufactured in a 0.8-micrometer CMOS process on a die area of 14.49 × 15.47 mm2, implementing 980,000 transistors. It was packaged in a 280-pin PGA, and operated at 25 and 33MHz with claimed peak performances of 12.5 and 16.5 MIPS, respectively. The V80 had separate 1KB on-die caches for both instructions and data. It had a 64-entry branch predictor, a 5% performance gain being attributed to it. The launch prices of the V80 were cited as equivalent to $1200 for the 33MHz model and $960 for the 25MHz model. Supposedly, a 45MHz model was scheduled for 1990,[59] but it did not materialize.
The Advanced Floating Point Processor (AFPP) (μPD72691) is a co-processor for floating-point arithmetic operations.[62] The V60/V70/V80 themselves can perform floating-point arithmetic, but they are very slow because they lack hardware dedicated to such operations. In 1989, to compensate V60/V70/V80 for their fairly weak floating-point performance, NEC launched this 80-bit floating-point co-processor for 32-bit single precision, 64-bit double precision, and 80-bit extended precision operations according to IEEE 754 specifications.[4][21] This chip had a performance of 6.7 MFLOPS, doing vector-matrix multiplication while operating at 20MHz. It was fabricated using a 1.2-micrometer double-metal layer CMOS process, resulting in 433,000 transistors on an 11.6 × 14.9 mm2 die.[4] It was packaged in a 68-pin PGA. This co-processor connected to a V80 via a dedicated bus, to a V60 or V70 via a shared main bus, which constrained peak performance.[21]
Hardware architecture
The V60/V70/V80 shared a basic architecture. They had thirty-two 32-bit general-purpose registers, with the last three of them commonly used as stack pointer, frame pointer, and argument pointer, which well matched high level languagecompilers' calling conventions.[29][63] The V60 and V70 have 119 machine instructions,[29] with that number being extended slightly to 123 instructions for the V80. The instructions are of non-uniform length, between one and 22 bytes,[1] and take two operands, both of which can be addresses in main memory.[21] After studying the V60's reference manual, Paul Vixie described it as "a very VAX-ish arch, with a V20/V30 emulation mode (which[...] means it can run Intel 8086/8088 software)".[64]
The V60–V80 has a built-in memory management unit (MMU)[8][62] that divides a 4-GBvirtual address space into four 1-GB sections, each section being further divided into 1,024 1-MB areas, and each area being composed of 256 4-KB pages. On the V60/V70, four registers (ATBR0 to ATBR3) store section pointers, but the "area tables entries" (ATE) and page tables entries (PTE) are stored in off-chip RAM. The V80 merged the ATE and ATBR registers—which are both on-chip, with only the PTE entries stored in external RAM—allowing for faster execution of translation lookaside buffer (TLB) misses by eliminating one memory read.[21]
The translation lookaside buffers on the V60/70 are 16-entry fully associative with replacement done by microcode. The V80, in contrast, has a 64-entry 2-way set associative TLB with replacement done in hardware. TLB replacement took 58 cycles in the V70 and disrupted the pipelined execution of other instructions. On the V80, a TLB replacement takes only 6 or 11 cycles depending on whether the page is in the same area; pipeline disruption no longer occurs in the V80 because of the separate TLB replacement hardware unit, which operates in parallel with the rest of the processor.[21]
All three processors use the same protection mechanism, with 4 protection levels set via a program status word, Ring 0 being the privileged level that could access a special set of registers on the processors.[21]
All three models support a triple-mode redundancy configuration with three CPUs used in a byzantine fault–tolerance scheme with bus freeze, instruction retry, and chip replacement signals.[21][28] The V80 added parity signals to its data and address buses.[21]
String operations were implemented in microcode in the V60/V70; but these were aided by a hardware data control unit, running at full bus speed, in the V80. This made string operations about five times faster in the V80 than in the V60/V70.[21]
All floating-point operations are largely implemented in microcode across the processor family and are thus fairly slow. On the V60/V70, the 32-bit floating-point operations take 120/116/137 cycles for addition/multiplication/division, while the corresponding 64-bit floating-point operations take 178/270/590 cycles. The V80 has some limited hardware assist for phases of floating-point operations—e.g. decomposition into sign, exponent, and mantissa—thus its floating-point unit was claimed to be up to three times as effective as that of the V70, with 32-bit floating-point operations taking 36/44/74 cycles and 64-bit operations taking 75/110/533 cycles (addition/multiplication/division).[21]
Operating systems
Unix (non-real-time and real-time)
NEC ported several variants of the Unix operating system to its V60/V70/V80 processors for user-application-oriented systems, including real-time ones. The first flavor of NEC's UNIX System V port for V60 was called PC-UX/VRel 2.0 (V60).[65] (Also refer to external link photos below.) NEC developed a Unix variant with a focus on real-time operation to run on V60/V70/V80. Called Real-time UNIX RX-UX 832, it has a double-layered kernel structure, with all task scheduling handled by the real-time kernel.[5] A multiprocessor version of RX-UX 832 was also developed, named MUSTARD (Multiprocessor Unix for Embedded Real-Time Systems).[66] The MUSTARD-powered computer prototype uses eight V70 processors. It utilizes FRM function, and can configure and change the configuration of master and checker upon request.[67][68]
I-TRON (real-time)
For hardware-control-oriented embedded systems, the I-TRON-based real-time operating system, named RX616, was implemented by NEC for the V60/V70.[27][23] The 32-bit RX616 was a continuous fork from the 16-bit RX116, which was for the V20-V50.[46][24]
The V60 could also run CP/M and DOS programs (ported from the V20-V50 series) using V20/V30 emulation mode.[33] According to a 1991 article in InfoWorld, Digital Research was working on a version of Concurrent DOS for the V60 at some point; but this was never released, as the V60/V70 processors were not imported to the US for use in PC clones.[70]
As of 2018[update], the processor-specific directory necv70 is still kept alive in the newlib C-language libraries (libc.a and libm.a) by RedHat.[76] Recent maintenance seems to be done on Sourceware.org. The latest source code is available from its gitrepository.[77]
MV-4100 Ada 83–certified system
The Ada 83–certified "platform system" was named MV-4000, certified as "MV4000". This certification was done with a target system, that utilized the real-time UNIX RX-UX 832 OS running on a VMEbus (IEEE 1014)–based system with a V70 processor board plugged in. The host of the cross compiler was an NEC Engineering Work Station EWS 4800, whose host OS, EWS-US/V, was also UNIX System V–based.[78][79][80][81]
NEC based its own full (non-ROM and non-JTAG) probe-based in-circuit emulator, the IE-V60, on the V60, because V60/V70 chips themselves had emulator-chip capabilities. The IE-V60 was the first in-circuit emulator for V60 that was manufactured by NEC. It also had a PROM programmer function.Section 9.4, p.205[2] NEC described it as a "user friendly software debug function". The chips have various trapping exceptions, such as data read (or write) to the user specified address, and 2 break-points simultaneously.Section 9[1]
These software and hardware debugging functions were also built into the V80. However, the V80 did not have an in-circuit emulator, possibly because the presence of such software as real-timeUNIX RX-UX 832 and real-timeI-TRON RX616 rendered such a function unnecessary. Once Unix boots up, there is no need for an in-circuit emulator for developing either device drivers or application software. What is needed is a Ccompiler, a cross compiler, and a screen debugger—such as GDB-Tk—that works with the target device,.
In its development phase, the V80 was thought to have the same performance as the Intel 80486,[87] but they ended up having many different features. The internal execution for each instruction of the V80 needed at least two cycles, while that of i486 required one. The internal pipeline of the V80 seemed buffered asynchronous, but that of i486 was synchronous. In other words, the internal microarchitecture of V80 was CISC, but that of i486 was RISC. Both of their ISAs allowed long non-uniform CISC instructions, but the i486 had a wider, 128-bit internal cache memory bus, while that of V80 had a 32-bit width. This difference can be seen on their die photos.[21][18][22][17] The design was fatal from the performance point of view, but NEC did not change it. NEC might have been able to redesign the physical design, with the same register-transfer level, but it did not.
Lack of commercial success
The V60-V80 architecture did not enjoy much commercial success.[32]
The V60, V70, and V80 were listed in the 1989 and 1990 NEC catalogs in their PGA packaging.[88][89] A NEC catalog from 1995 still listed the V60 and V70 (not only in their PGA version but also in a QFP packaging, and also included a low-cost variant of the V60 named μPD70615, which eliminated V20/V30 emulation and FRM function), alongside their assorted chipsets; but the V80 was not offered in this catalog.[36] The 1999 edition of the same catalog no longer had any V60-V80 products.[90]
At this time, the enormous software assets of the V60/V70, such as real-time Unix, were abandoned and never returned to their successors, a scenario Intel avoided.
The V800Series had 3 major variants, the V810, V830, and V850 families.[92][3][93]
The V820 (μPD70742) was a simple variant of the V810 (μPD70732), but with peripherals.
As of 2005, it was already the V850 era, and the V850family has been enjoying great success.[94] As of 2018, it is called the Renesas V850family and the RH850family, with V850/V850E1/V850E2 and V850E2/V850E3 CPU cores, respectively. Those CPU cores have extended the ISA of the original V810 core;[95] running with the V850 compiler.[96]
Alpha is a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Alpha was designed to replace 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computers (CISC) and to be a highly competitive RISC processor for Unix workstations and similar markets.
A microprocessor is a computer processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circuitry required to perform the functions of a computer's central processing unit (CPU). The IC is capable of interpreting and executing program instructions and performing arithmetic operations. The microprocessor is a multipurpose, clock-driven, register-based, digital integrated circuit that accepts binary data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and provides results as output. Microprocessors contain both combinational logic and sequential digital logic, and operate on numbers and symbols represented in the binary number system.
MIPS is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures (ISA) developed by MIPS Computer Systems, now MIPS Technologies, based in the United States.
Precision Architecture RISC (PA-RISC) or Hewlett Packard Precision Architecture, is a general purpose computer instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Hewlett-Packard from the 1980s until the 2000s.
The 88000 is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Motorola during the 1980s. The MC88100 arrived on the market in 1988, some two years after the competing SPARC and MIPS. Due to the late start and extensive delays releasing the second-generation MC88110, the m88k achieved very limited success outside of the MVME platform and embedded controller environments. When Motorola joined the AIM alliance in 1991 to develop the PowerPC, further development of the 88000 ended.
The Intel i860 is a RISC microprocessor design introduced by Intel in 1989. It is one of Intel's first attempts at an entirely new, high-end instruction set architecture since the failed Intel iAPX 432 from the beginning of the 1980s. It was the world's first million-transistor chip. It was released with considerable fanfare, slightly obscuring the earlier Intel i960, which was successful in some niches of embedded systems. The i860 never achieved commercial success and the project was terminated in the mid-1990s.
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The Clipper architecture is a 32-bit RISC-like instruction set architecture designed by Fairchild Semiconductor. The architecture never enjoyed much market success, and the only computer manufacturers to create major product lines using Clipper processors were Intergraph and High Level Hardware, although Opus Systems offered a product based on the Clipper as part of its Personal Mainframe range. The first processors using the Clipper architecture were designed and sold by Fairchild, but the division responsible for them was subsequently sold to Intergraph in 1987; Intergraph continued work on Clipper processors for use in its own systems.
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The R3000 is a 32-bit RISC microprocessor chipset developed by MIPS Computer Systems that implemented the MIPS I instruction set architecture (ISA). Introduced in June 1988, it was the second MIPS implementation, succeeding the R2000 as the flagship MIPS microprocessor. It operated at 20, 25 and 33.33 MHz.
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The R2000 is a 32-bit microprocessor chip set developed by MIPS Computer Systems that implemented the MIPS I instruction set architecture (ISA). Introduced in January 1986, it was the first commercial implementation of the MIPS architecture and the first commercial RISC processor available to all companies. The R2000 competed with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) VAX minicomputers and with Motorola 68000 and Intel Corporation 80386 microprocessors. R2000 users included Ardent Computer, DEC, Silicon Graphics, Northern Telecom and MIPS's own Unix workstations.
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Kani, Dr. Kenji (April 1987). Vシリーズマイクロコンピュータ 2[V-Series Microcomputer 2] (in Japanese). Maruzen. ISBN978-4621031575. 本書は日本電気(株)が、わが国ではじめて開発した32ビットマイクロプロセッサV60について解説したものである。[This book explains the V60, Japanese first developed 32-bit microprocessor by NEC.]
1 2 Suzuki, Hiroaki; Sakai, Toshichika; Harigai, Hisao; Yano, Yoichi (1995-04-25). "A 0.9-V, 2.5MHz CMOS 32-bit Microprocessor". IEICE Transactions on Electronics. E78-C (4): 389–393. ISSN0916-8516. Retrieved 2018-01-09. Summary: A 32-bit RISC microprocessor "V810" that has 5-stage pipeline structure and a 1 Kbyte, direct-mapped instruction cache realizes 2.5MHz operation at 0.9 V with 2.0 mW power consumption. The supply voltage can be reduced to 0.75 V. To overcome narrow noise margin, all the signals are set to have rail-to-rail swing by pseudo-static circuit technique. The chip is fabricated by a 0.8 μm double metal-layer CMOS process technology to integrate 240,000 transistors on a 7.4 mm7.1 mm die.
1 2 3 Nakayama, T.; Harigai, H.; Kojima, S.; Kaneko, H.; Igarashi, H.; Toba, T.; Yamagami, Y.; Yano, Y. (Oct 1989). "A 6.7-MFLOPS floating-point coprocessor with vector/matrix instructions". IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits. 24 (5): 1324–1330. Bibcode:1989IJSSC..24.1324N. doi:10.1109/JSSC.1989.572608. ISSN1558-173X. Abstract: An 80-bit floating-point coprocessor which implements 24 vector/matrix instructions and 22 mathematical functions is described. This processor can execute floating-point addition/rounding and pipelined multiplication concurrently, under the control of horizontal-type microinstructions. The SRT division method and CORDIC trigonometrical algorithm are used for a favorable cost/performance implementation. The performance of 6.7 MFLOPS in the vector-matrix multiplication at 20MHz has been attained by the use of parallel operations. The vector/matrix instruction is about three times faster than conventional add and multiply instructions. The chip has been fabricated in 1.2- mu m double-metal layer CMOS process containing 433000 transistors on an 11.6*14.9-mm/sup 2/ die size.
1 2 Mizuhashi, Yukiko; Teramoto, Msanoro (August 1989). "Real-time UNIX operating system: RX-UX 832". Microprocessing and Microprogramming. 27 (1–5): 533–538. doi:10.1016/0165-6074(89)90105-1. Abstract: This paper describes requirements for real-time UNIX operating systems, design concept and the implementation of RX-UX 832 real-time UNIX operating system for v60/v70 microprocessor which are NEC's 32-bit microprocessors. RX-UX 832 is implemented adopting the building block structure, composed of three modules, real-time kernel, file-server and Unix supervisor. To guarantee a real-time responsibility, several enhancements were introduced such as, fixed priority task scheduling scheme, contiguous block file system and fault tolerant functions. Thus, RX-UX 832 allows system designers to use standard Unix as its man-machine interface to build fault tolerant systems with sophisticated operability and provides high-quality software applications on the high performance microchips.
1 2 Hardenbergh, Hal W (1988). "RISCs CISCs and Fabs". Programmer's Journal. Avant-Garde Creations. 6 (2): 15. So far we haven't mentioned two 32-bit CISC chips, the NEC V60/70 and the AT&T WE32 family. Unlike the NEC V20/25/30/50, the V60/70 is not based on the Intel architecture. NEC is targeting the V60/70 at embedded applications, ...Google Books
1 2 3 Yamahata, Hitoshi; Suzuki, Nariko; Koumoto, Yasuhiko; Shiiba, Tadaaki (1987-02-06). "マイクロプロセッサV60のアーキテクチャ"[Architecture of the microprocessor V60](PDF). SIG Technical Reports; Microcomputer 43-2 (in Japanese). Information Processing Society of Japan. 1987 (8(1986-ARC-043)): 1–8. AN10096105. This report will describe a single chip 32-bit CMOS VLSI microprocessor V60. It has been implemented by using a double metal-layer CMOS process technology with 1.5 um design rule to integrate 375,000 transistors. It integrates the virtual memory management unit for demand paging and the floating-point operations that conform to the IEEE-754 Floating-Point Standard. By using V20/V30 emulation mode, it can directly execute object programs of 16-bit CPU (V30). Instruction formats are suited to code-generation phase of compilers. 237 instructions are provided for high-level language and operating system. It can execute 3.5 MIPS (Million Instructions per Second) at 16-MHz operation with 16-bit data bus.
↑ Sakamura, Ken (April 1988). "Recent Trends"(PDF). IEEE Micro. 8 (2): 10–11. ISSN0272-1732. Retrieved 2018-01-08. The V60/V70, NEC's proprietary CPU, is the first commercial-base, general-purpose, 32-bit microprocessor in Japan.
↑ Rowen, C.; Przbylski, S.; Jouppi, N.; Gross, T.; Shott, J.; Hennessy, J. (1984). "A pipelined 32b NMOS microprocessor". 1984 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference. Digest of Technical Papers. Vol.XXVII. pp.180–181. doi:10.1109/ISSCC.1984.1156607. S2CID42147153. Stanford MIPS
↑ Kohn, L.; Fu, S. W. (1989). "A 1,000,000 transistor microprocessor". IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference, 1989 ISSCC. Digest of Technical Papers. pp.54–55. doi:10.1109/ISSCC.1989.48231. S2CID58413700. Intel 860
↑ NEC (June 1997). 16-BIT V SERIES; INSTRUCTIONS (5ed.). The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. EPUB, KINDLE, PDF, FULL TEXT, etc, are available.
1 2 Fu, B.; Saini, A.; Gelsinger, P. P. (1989). "Performance and microarchitecture of the i486 processor". Proceedings 1989 IEEE International Conference on Computer Design: VLSI in Computers and Processors. pp.182–187. doi:10.1109/ICCD.1989.63352. ISBN0-8186-1971-6. S2CID62082864. Intel 80486 Abstract: The i486 microprocessor includes a carefully tuned, five-stage pipeline with an integrated 8-kB cache. A variety of techniques previously associated only with RISC (reduced-instruction-set computer) processors are used to execute the average instruction in 1.8 clocks. This represents a 2.5* reduction from its predecessor, the 386 microprocessor. The pipeline and clock count comparisons are described in detail. In addition, an onchip floating-point unit is included which yields a 4* clock count reduction from the 387 numeric coprocessor. The microarchitecture enhancements and optimizations used to achieve this goal, most of which are non-silicon-intensive, are discussed. All instructions of the 386 microprocessor and the 387 numeric coprocessor are implemented in a completely compatible fashion.
↑ Wade, James (1 October 1996). "A Community-Level Analysis of Sources and Rates of Technological Variation in the Microprocessor Market". Academy of Management Journal. 39 (5): 1218–1244. doi:10.2307/256997. ISSN0001-4273. JSTOR256997. The sponsors that did not use RISC technology were NEC, AT&T, and Followers of the TRON standard. All three of these microprocessors were specialized for users for whom performance was the highest priority. The Hitachi microprocessor followed the TRON standard, a high-performance CISC technology that, Japanese developers suggested, would be a viable alternative to RISC. The AT&T chip was portrayed as a chip suitable for building top-of-the-line, minicomputer-like computing systems. Similarly, NEC's V60 and V70 were patterned after one of NEC's 36-bit mainframe computers.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Komoto, Yasuhiko; Saito, Tatsuya; Mine, Kazumasa (1990-08-25). "Overview of 32-bit V-Series Microprocessor"(pdf). Journal of Information Processing. 13 (2): 110–122. ISSN1882-6652. Retrieved 2018-01-08. Open Access Abstract: The advances in semiconductor manufacturing technology make it possible to integrate a floating-point unit and a memory management unit noto one microprocessor chip. They also permit the designers of a microprocessor to implement techniques used in the design of mainframe computers especially with regard to pipeline structures. The architecture of the V60 V70 and V80 was made possible by there advances. The V60 and V70 are NEC's first 32-bit microprocessors and include almost all the functions required by applied systems in a chip. The instruction set provides a high-level-language-oriented structure operating system sup-port functions and support functions for highly reliable systems. The V80 also employs the same architecture and achieves higher performance by means of cache memories and branch prediction mechanisms. The V80achieved a performance from two to four times higher than that of the V70.
1 2 Kaneko, Hiraoki; Suzuki, Nariko; Wabuka, Hiroshi; Maemura, Koji (1 March 1990). "Realizing the V80 and its system support functions". IEEE Micro. ACM. 10 (2): 56–69. doi:10.1109/40.52947. ISSN0272-1732. S2CID2634866. Abstract: An overview is given of the architecture of an overall design considerations for the 11-unit, 32-b V80 microprocessor, which includes two 1-kB cache memories and a branch prediction mechanism that is a new feature for microprocessors. The V80's pipeline processing and system support functions for multiprocessor and high-reliability systems are discussed. Using V80 support functions, multiprocessor and high-reliability systems were realized without any performance drop. Cache memories and a branch prediction mechanism were used to improve pipeline processing. Various hardware facilities replaced the usual microprogram to ensure high performance.
1 2 Shimojima, Takehiko; Teramoto, Masanori (1987). "V60 real-time operating system". Microprocessing and Microprogramming. 21 (1–5): 197–204. doi:10.1016/0165-6074(87)90038-X. ISSN0165-6074. Abstract: This paper describes the requirements for 32-bit microprocessor real-time operating systems, design objectives and the implementation of the V60/V70 Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) and its programming supports.
1 2 Monden, Hiroshi; Teramoto, Takashi; Koga, Masanori (1986-03-14). "V60用アルタイムOSの検討 －32ビットI-TRONに向けて－"[Feasibility study of real-time OS for the V60 - toward for the 32-bit I-TRON -](PDF). SIG (ARC) Technical Reports (in Japanese). Information Processing Society of Japan. 1986 (19(1985-ARC-061)): 1–8. AN10096105. Open Access
1 2 Kimura, S.; Komoto, Y.; Yano, Y. (April 1988). "Implementation of the V60/V70 and its FRM function". IEEE Micro. 8 (2): 22–36. doi:10.1109/40.527. S2CID9507994. Abstract: A description is given of the V60/V70, the first commercially based, general-purpose 32-bit microprocessor in Japan. Its functions include on-chip floating-point operations, a high-level-language-oriented architecture, software debugging support, and support functions to promote a high level of system reliability. Because high reliability is so important, the V60/V70 contains functional redundancy monitoring (FRM) support functions. The discussion covers the overall design considerations, architecture, implementation, hazard detection and control, and FRM functions. The V60/V70 uses a TRON real-time operating system specification.
1 2 Yano, Y.; Koumoto, Y.; Sato, Y. (Spring 1988). "V60/V70 microprocessor and its systems support functions". Digest of Papers. COMPCON Spring 88 Thirty-Third IEEE Computer Society International Conference. pp.36–42. doi:10.1109/CMPCON.1988.4824. ISBN0-8186-0828-5. S2CID9186701. Abstract: Two advanced 32-bit microprocessors, the V60 and V70 (mu PD70616 and mu PD70632, respectively), and their support functions for operating systems and high-reliability systems are described. Three operating system functions, namely, the virtual memory support functions, context-switch functions, and asynchronous trap functions are examined. A basic mechanism for high-reliability-system implementation, called FRM (functional redundancy monitoring), is discussed. FRM allows a system to be designed in which multiple V60s (or V70s) form a configuration in which one processor in the system acts as a master while the others act as monitors. An FRM board that uses three V60s in its redundant core is introduced.
1 2 3 4 Takahashi, Toshiya; Yano, Yoichi (1988-01-21). "V60/V70アーキテクチャ"[The Architecture of V60/V70 Microprocessors](PDF). SIG Technical Reports (in Japanese). Information Processing Society of Japan. 1988 (4(1987-ARC-069)): 57–64. AN10096105. This report describes the architecture of V60/V70 32-bit microprocessors. The architecture integrates various features into a single silicon die, such as a rich set of general-purpose registers, high level language oriented instruction set, floating-point data handling which is suitable for scientific applications, and the FRM (Functionality Redundancy Monitoring) operation mode which supports highly-reliable systems configuration. These features will be introduced.
↑ Yano, Yoichi (April 2012). "32ビット・マイコン「V60」開発物語"[Development story of the 32-bit microcomputer V60](PDF) (in Japanese). Semiconductor History Museum of Japan. Retrieved 2018-01-08. "Encore 2012 #75"(pdf). Bulletin "Encore" (in Japanese). Society of Semiconductor Industry Specialists. 75: 17–20. April 2012. Retrieved 2018-01-08.
↑ Richard Tan. "STS 145 Case Study Sega: The effect of corporate conflict on game design"(PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on 2014-02-22. "The Saturn originally ran on a NEC V60 chip at 16MHz. Compare this to the PlayStation CPU (MIPS R3000A 32bit RISC chip) which runs are 33.8MHz, almost double the speed. According to one Sega staff member, when Nakayama first received design specifications for the PlayStation, he was 'the maddest I have ever seen him', calling up the entire R&D division to his office to shout at them. An effort was made to compensate by adding another CPU for dual operation; however, this solution made the system so hard to develop for that, according to Yu Suzuki himself, "only 1 out of 100 programmers could use the Saturn to its full potential.""
↑ NEC LAUNCHES V80 ANSWER TO INTEL's 80486 - Computer Business Review, 1989-03-15 Balcklist:www.cbronline.com/news/nec_launches_v80_answer_to_intels_80486
1 2 NEC MAY HAVE THE EDGE WITH ITS 930,000 TRANSISTOR V80 ANSWER TO INTEL'S 80486 - Computer Business Review, 1989-04-06 Balcklist:www.cbronline.com/news/nec_may_have_the_edge_with_its_930000_transistor_v80_answer_to_intels_80486
1 2 Majithi, Kenneth (1987). "The New Generation of Microprocessors". IEEE Micro. 7 (4): 4–5. doi:10.1109/MM.1987.304873. ISSN0272-1732. The Japanese have been equally aggressive in their new designs of high-performance microprocessors. NEC's V60 and V70 microprocessors use architectures that include not only the MMU but also an arithmetic floating-point unit on chip. Hitachi and Fujitsu have collaborated to produce a family of microprocessors adapted to the TRON operating system. These processors incorporate instruction pipelines as well as instruction and stack caches. However, unlike NEC, their FPU function is off chip.
↑ Cygnus Solutions (1999-02-25). "Re: Patch to replace CYGNUS LOCAL with EGCS LOCAL in config.sub". gcc-patches (Mailing list). Seems like a misguided exercise to me. If the changes are truly Cygnus-specific, they should not be in Egcs. Otherwise, they should be merged into the config.sub master copy (whose maintainer, by the way, in Ben!).
↑ Harigai, Hisao; Kusuda, Masaori; Kojima, Shingo; Moriyama, Masatoshi; Ienaga, Takashi; Yano, Yoichi (1992-10-22). "低消費電力・低電圧動作の32ビットマイクロプロセッサV810"[A low power consumption and low voltage operation 32-bit RISC Microprocessor]. SIG Technical Reports, Information Processing Society of Japan. 1992 (82 (1992-ARC-096)): 41–48. Abstract: An advanced 32-bit RISC microprocessor for embedded control; V810 is introduced in this paper. The V810 has high performance and application specified functions. V810 dissipates less power than any other RISC chips. The V810 is the first 32-bit RISC microprocessor that operates at 2.2V. The V810 chip is fabricated by using 0.8μm CMOS double metal layer process technology to integrate 240,000 transistors on a 7.7×7.7mm2 die.
Yano, Y; Iwasaki, J; Sato, Y; Iwata, T; Nakagawa, K; Ueda, M (Feb 1986). A 32b CMOS VLSI microprocessor with on-chip virtual memory management. Solid-State Circuits Conference. Digest of Technical Papers. 1986 IEEE International. Vol.XXIX. IEEE. pp.36–37. doi:10.1109/ISSCC.1986.1156924. S2CID57668899. The execution unit (EXU) is a microprogrammed 32b data path processor which has thirty-two 32b general-purpose registers, sixteen 32b scratch-pad registers, a 64b barrel shifter, a 32b arithmetic logic unit (ALU); and a couple of control registers. Three data-buses that are running
Kaneko, H; Miki, Y; Koya, K; Araki, M (November 1986). "A 32-bit CMOS microprocessor with six-stage pipeline structure". Proceedings of 1986 ACM Fall Joint Computer Conference. IEEE Computer Society Press. pp.1000–1007. Abstract: 32-bit microprocessors are the key devices which carry high data processing capability, that was obtained by earlier general-purpose computer systems and mini-computer systems, in much lower cost. Earlier 32-bit microprocessors were limited to adopt excellent architecture and design using appropriate hardware by number of devices could be fabricated on a chip. Complex functions such as Virtual Memory management and ...
Kurosawa, A.; Yamada, K.; Kishimoto, A.; Mori, K.; Nishiguchi, N. (May 1987). "A Practical CAD System Application for Full Custom VLSI Microcomputer Chips". IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems. 6 (3): 364–373. doi:10.1109/TCAD.1987.1270281. ISSN1937-4151. S2CID7394658. Abstract: This paper presents a practical CAD system application for layout and verification, resulting in producible full-cutom VLSI microcomputer chips. The CAD system supports three design methodologies--symbolic layout mixed with mask level layout, compaction as an optimizer, and fully automated verification. For the area optimization, the symbolic layout and compactor subsystem supports a flexible description of orthogonal layout patterns with arbitrary dimensions in a loose placement manner. The layout patterns include path data, polygonal data, and symbolic cells. For power and delay optimization, the compactor compacts layout data, decreasing both resistance and capacitance for wires and ion-implanted layers. This feature is pioneering the new generation compactor. Emphasis should be put on the fact that it can compact layout data to a format 10-15 percent smaller than that accomplished manually. The verification subsystem can detect all kinds of errors, more than 30 items. A novel feature of the electrical rule check is that it investigates complementary logic errors for CMOS circuits. The synergy of those three design methodologies has brought about several significant advantages. One is manpower reduction by more than half, in the most complicated design process for unique random logic. The other is a 1600-transistors compaction output, smaller by 365 mils/sup 2/ than that manually compacted. The circuit implementation on a chip works at more than a 15MHz clock rate. Another is the first silicon success. It has been accomplished in a full-custom VLSI microcomputer chip consisting of more than 100 000 transistors.
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