DECstation

The second line of DECstations began with the DECstation 2100 and 3100, released in 1989, which were the first commercially available RISC-based machines built by DEC. At the time DEC was mostly known for their CISC systems including the successful PDP and VAX lines. The DECstation 3100 was claimed to be the world's fastest UNIX workstation at the time. When it was introduced it was about three times as fast as the VAXstation 3100 which was introduced at about the same time. In contrast to the VAX (and the later DEC Alpha architecture), no v ...

See also:

DECstation, DECstation - First DECstation line, DECstation - Second DECstation line, DECstation - Models

Read more here: » DECstation: Encyclopedia II - DECstation - Second DECstation line

The DEC Alpha, also known as the Alpha AXP, is a 64-bit RISC microprocessor originally developed and fabricated by Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), which used it in its own line of workstations and servers. Designed as a successor to the VAX line of computers, it supported the VMS operating system, as well as Digital UNIX. Later open source operating systems also ran on the Alpha, notably Linux and BSD UNIX flavours. Microsoft supported the processor until Windows NT 4.0 SP6 but did not extend Alpha support beyond release candida ...

Including:

• DEC Alpha - History
• DEC Alpha - Versions
• DEC Alpha - Model history

Read more here: » DEC Alpha: Encyclopedia - DEC Alpha

MIPS Magnum - Processors. As mentioned, the MIPS Magnum 3000 includes a MIPS R3000A processor running at either 25 MHz or 33 MHz. The MIPS Magnum R4000 PC-50 includes a MIPS R4000PC processor with only 16 kB primary cache (but no secondary cache), running at an external clock rate of 50 MHz (which was internally doubled in the microprocessor to 100 MHz). The MIPS Magnum R4000 SC-50 is identical to the Magnum R4000PC, but includes one megabyte of secondary cache in addition to the primary cache. < ...

See also:

MIPS Magnum, MIPS Magnum - Series, MIPS Magnum - MIPS Magnum 3000, MIPS Magnum - MIPS Magnum R4000, MIPS Magnum - Components, MIPS Magnum - Processors, MIPS Magnum - Memory, MIPS Magnum - SCSI, MIPS Magnum - Ethernet, MIPS Magnum - Framebuffer, MIPS Magnum - Serial and Parallel I/O, MIPS Magnum - Floppy disk, MIPS Magnum - Historical development, MIPS Magnum - Operating Systems, MIPS Magnum - Windows NT, MIPS Magnum - RISC/os, MIPS Magnum - NetBSD and OpenBSD, MIPS Magnum - Linux, MIPS Magnum - Emulation

Read more here: » MIPS Magnum: Encyclopedia II - MIPS Magnum - Components

Alpha was born out of an earlier RISC project named PRISM, itself the final product of several earlier projects. DEC had been marketing the DECstation line of workstations based on the MIPS architecture, and unsurprisingly PRISM shared many features with MIPS. Among the differences between PRISM and MIPS, however, was that PRISM supported a user-programmable microcode known as Epicode. PRISM had been designed with the intent of releasing a new operating system along with it, known as Emerald, which would allow it to run "native ...

See also:

DEC Alpha, DEC Alpha - History, DEC Alpha - Versions, DEC Alpha - Model history

Read more here: » DEC Alpha: Encyclopedia II - DEC Alpha - History

The company was founded in 1957 by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson, two engineers who had been working at MIT Lincoln Laboratory on the TX-2 project. The TX-2 was a transistor-based computer using the then-huge amount of 64K 36-bit words of core memory. When that project ran into difficulties, Olsen left to form DEC with Harlan Anderson, a colleague from his MIT days. At the time the market was hostile to computer companies, and investors shied from their plans. Instead they started building small digital "modules" (each effectively a s ...

See also:

Digital Equipment Corporation, Digital Equipment Corporation - History, Digital Equipment Corporation - 8-bit computers, Digital Equipment Corporation - 12-bit Computers, Digital Equipment Corporation - 16-bit computers, Digital Equipment Corporation - 18-bit Computers, Digital Equipment Corporation - 36-bit computers, Digital Equipment Corporation - VAX Computer series, Digital Equipment Corporation - Alpha, Digital Equipment Corporation - Closing DEC's Business, Digital Equipment Corporation - Accomplishments

Read more here: » Digital Equipment Corporation: Encyclopedia II - Digital Equipment Corporation - History

The project was launched in 1991 with a famous post to the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.minix that includes this sentence: "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones..." [1] At the time, the GNU project had created many of the components required for a free operating system, but its own kernel, the GNU Hurd, was incomplete and unavailable. The BSD operating system had not yet freed itself from legal encumbrances. This left a space for the Li ...

See also:

Linux kernel, Linux kernel - History, Linux kernel - Timeline, Linux kernel - Mascot, Linux kernel - Licensing terms, Linux kernel - Litigation, Linux kernel - Technical features, Linux kernel - Architecture, Linux kernel - Programming languages, Linux kernel - Portability, Linux kernel - Versions, Linux kernel - Version numbering, Linux kernel - Maintenance, Linux kernel - Stable version history

Read more here: » Linux kernel: Encyclopedia II - Linux kernel - History

In 1988, during the so-called "Unix wars", DEC joined with IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and others to form the Open Software Foundation (OSF) to develop a version of Unix to compete with System V Release 4 from AT&T and Sun Microsystems. OSF/1 was one of the first operating systems to use the Mach kernel, developed at Carnegie Mellon University, incorporating components of the BSD kernel to provide Unix compatibility. OSF/1 was to have been the third major branch of the Unix famil ...

See also:

Tru64, Tru64 - OSF/1, Tru64 - Digital UNIX, Tru64 - Tru64 UNIX, Tru64 - Future plans

Read more here: » Tru64: Encyclopedia II - Tru64 - OSF/1

In 1981, a team led by John L. Hennessy at Stanford University started work on what would become the first MIPS processor. The basic concept was to dramatically increase performance through the use of deep instruction pipelines, a technique that was well known, but difficult to implement. Generally a pipeline spreads out the task of running an instruction into several steps, starting work on "step one" of an instruction before the preceding instruction is complete. In contrast, traditional designs of the era waited to complete an entire instruction before moving on, thereby leaving large ar ...

See also:

MIPS architecture, MIPS architecture - History, MIPS architecture - MIPS CPU family, MIPS architecture - Applications, MIPS architecture - Other models and future plans, MIPS architecture - MIPS cores, MIPS architecture - MIPS Programming and Emulation, MIPS architecture - Summary of R3000 instruction set, MIPS architecture - Memory to register transfer instructions, MIPS architecture - Register to memory transfer instructions, MIPS architecture - Register to register move instructions, MIPS architecture - Common arithmetic instructions, MIPS architecture - Common logic instructions bitwise, MIPS architecture - Common shift instructions, MIPS architecture - Branching and jump instructions, MIPS architecture - Some other important instructions

Read more here: » MIPS architecture: Encyclopedia II - MIPS architecture - History

Other members of the MIPS family include the R6000, an ECL implementation of the MIPS architecture which was produced by Bipolar Integrated Technology. The R6000 microprocessor introduced the MIPS II instruction set. Its TLB and cache architecture are different from all other members of the MIPS family. The R6000 did not deliver the promised performance benefits, and although it saw some use in Control Data machines, it quickly disappeared from the mainstream market. The RM7000 was a version of the R5000 with a built-i ...

See also:

MIPS architecture, MIPS architecture - History, MIPS architecture - MIPS CPU family, MIPS architecture - Applications, MIPS architecture - Other models and future plans, MIPS architecture - MIPS cores, MIPS architecture - MIPS Programming and Emulation, MIPS architecture - Summary of R3000 instruction set, MIPS architecture - Memory to register transfer instructions, MIPS architecture - Register to memory transfer instructions, MIPS architecture - Register to register move instructions, MIPS architecture - Common arithmetic instructions, MIPS architecture - Common logic instructions bitwise, MIPS architecture - Common shift instructions, MIPS architecture - Branching and jump instructions, MIPS architecture - Some other important instructions

Read more here: » MIPS architecture: Encyclopedia II - MIPS architecture - Other models and future plans

There is a freely available "MIPS R2000/R3000 Simulator" called SPIM for several operating systems (specifically Unix or GNU/Linux; Mac OS X; MS Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP; and DOS) which is good for learning MIPS assembly language programming and the general concepts of RISC-assembly language programming: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html A more feature-rich MIPS emulator is available from the GXemul project (formerly known as the mips64emul project), which emulates not only the various MIPS III and higher microprocessors (fr ...

See also:

MIPS architecture, MIPS architecture - History, MIPS architecture - MIPS CPU family, MIPS architecture - Applications, MIPS architecture - Other models and future plans, MIPS architecture - MIPS cores, MIPS architecture - MIPS Programming and Emulation, MIPS architecture - Summary of R3000 instruction set, MIPS architecture - Memory to register transfer instructions, MIPS architecture - Register to memory transfer instructions, MIPS architecture - Register to register move instructions, MIPS architecture - Common arithmetic instructions, MIPS architecture - Common logic instructions bitwise, MIPS architecture - Common shift instructions, MIPS architecture - Branching and jump instructions, MIPS architecture - Some other important instructions

Read more here: » MIPS architecture: Encyclopedia II - MIPS architecture - MIPS Programming and Emulation

Among the manufacturers which made computer workstation systems using MIPS processors are SGI, MIPS Computer Systems, Inc., Olivetti, Siemens-Nixdorf, Acer, Digital Equipment Corporation, NEC, and DeskStation. Various operating systems have been ported to the architecture, such as SGI's IRIX, Microsoft's Windows NT (although support for MIPS ended with the release of Windows NT 4.0) and Windows CE, Linux, BSD, UNIX System V, SINI ...

See also:

MIPS architecture, MIPS architecture - History, MIPS architecture - MIPS CPU family, MIPS architecture - Applications, MIPS architecture - Other models and future plans, MIPS architecture - MIPS cores, MIPS architecture - MIPS Programming and Emulation, MIPS architecture - Summary of R3000 instruction set, MIPS architecture - Memory to register transfer instructions, MIPS architecture - Register to memory transfer instructions, MIPS architecture - Register to register move instructions, MIPS architecture - Common arithmetic instructions, MIPS architecture - Common logic instructions bitwise, MIPS architecture - Common shift instructions, MIPS architecture - Branching and jump instructions, MIPS architecture - Some other important instructions

Read more here: » MIPS architecture: Encyclopedia II - MIPS architecture - Applications

In recent years most of the technology used in the various MIPS generations has been offered as building-blocks for embedded processor designs. Both 32-bit and 64-bit basic cores are offered, known as the 4K and 5K respectively, and the design itself can be licensed as MIPS32 and MIPS64. These cores can be mixed with add-in units such as FPUs, SIMD systems, various input/output devices, etc. MIPS cores have been very successful. They form the basis of many newer Cisco routers, cable modems and ADSL modems, smartcards, laser printer engines, set-top boxes, robots, handheld computers, S ...

See also:

MIPS architecture, MIPS architecture - History, MIPS architecture - MIPS CPU family, MIPS architecture - Applications, MIPS architecture - Other models and future plans, MIPS architecture - MIPS cores, MIPS architecture - MIPS Programming and Emulation, MIPS architecture - Summary of R3000 instruction set, MIPS architecture - Memory to register transfer instructions, MIPS architecture - Register to memory transfer instructions, MIPS architecture - Register to register move instructions, MIPS architecture - Common arithmetic instructions, MIPS architecture - Common logic instructions bitwise, MIPS architecture - Common shift instructions, MIPS architecture - Branching and jump instructions, MIPS architecture - Some other important instructions

Read more here: » MIPS architecture: Encyclopedia II - MIPS architecture - MIPS cores

The MIPS Magnum 3000 used a MIPS R3000 processor and a custom, proprietary motherboard which incorporated the Turbochannel bus licensed from DEC (it is noted that DEC also manufactured the DECstation line of workstations running Ultrix, which also used MIPS processors and the Turbochannel bus). The Magnum 3000 ran only RISC/os, which was MIPS Computer Systems, Inc.'s proprietary port of BSD Unix including some System V features. The later Magnums, the MIPS Magnum R4000PC and MIPS Magnum R4000SC, also used a MIPS microprocessor — the ...

See also:

MIPS Magnum, MIPS Magnum - Series, MIPS Magnum - MIPS Magnum 3000, MIPS Magnum - MIPS Magnum R4000, MIPS Magnum - Components, MIPS Magnum - Processors, MIPS Magnum - Memory, MIPS Magnum - SCSI, MIPS Magnum - Ethernet, MIPS Magnum - Framebuffer, MIPS Magnum - Serial and Parallel I/O, MIPS Magnum - Floppy disk, MIPS Magnum - Historical development, MIPS Magnum - Operating Systems, MIPS Magnum - Windows NT, MIPS Magnum - RISC/os, MIPS Magnum - NetBSD and OpenBSD, MIPS Magnum - Linux, MIPS Magnum - Emulation

Read more here: » MIPS Magnum: Encyclopedia II - MIPS Magnum - Historical development

Linux kernel - Architecture. The Linux kernel includes true multitasking, virtual memory, shared libraries, demand loading, shared copy-on-write executables, proper memory management, and TCP/IP networking. Today Linux is a module-loading monolithic kernel. Device drivers and kernel extensions typically run in ring 0, with full access to the hardware, although some run in user space. Unlike standard monolithic kernels, device drivers are easily configured as modules, and loaded or unloaded while running th ...

See also:

Linux kernel, Linux kernel - History, Linux kernel - Timeline, Linux kernel - Mascot, Linux kernel - Licensing terms, Linux kernel - Litigation, Linux kernel - Technical features, Linux kernel - Architecture, Linux kernel - Programming languages, Linux kernel - Portability, Linux kernel - Versions, Linux kernel - Version numbering, Linux kernel - Maintenance, Linux kernel - Stable version history

Read more here: » Linux kernel: Encyclopedia II - Linux kernel - Technical features

Model number information. MIPS Magnum - MIPS Magnum 3000. Alternative model name: MIPS RC3230 Release: March, 1990 Initial price: $9000 USD Bus: Turbochannel Maximum possible RAM: 128 MB MIPS Magnum - MIPS Magnum R4000. Two subtypes: The R4000 PC-50 and R4000 SC-50 Release: April, 1992 Initial price: $12,000.00 USD Bus: EISA Maximum pos ...

See also:

MIPS Magnum, MIPS Magnum - Series, MIPS Magnum - MIPS Magnum 3000, MIPS Magnum - MIPS Magnum R4000, MIPS Magnum - Components, MIPS Magnum - Processors, MIPS Magnum - Memory, MIPS Magnum - SCSI, MIPS Magnum - Ethernet, MIPS Magnum - Framebuffer, MIPS Magnum - Serial and Parallel I/O, MIPS Magnum - Floppy disk, MIPS Magnum - Historical development, MIPS Magnum - Operating Systems, MIPS Magnum - Windows NT, MIPS Magnum - RISC/os, MIPS Magnum - NetBSD and OpenBSD, MIPS Magnum - Linux, MIPS Magnum - Emulation

Read more here: » MIPS Magnum: Encyclopedia II - MIPS Magnum - Series

MIPS Magnum - Windows NT. The MIPS Magnum R4000 ran either Windows NT (beginning with version 3.1) when equipped with the little-endian ARC firmware, or RISC/os when MIPS Computer Systems, Inc.'s proprietary big-endian firmware (the "MIPS Monitor") was installed. The firmware could be switched between ARC or MIPS Monitor by loading either one into the Magnum's FLASH memory/NVRAM from floppy disk, and thus the Magn ...

See also:

MIPS Magnum, MIPS Magnum - Series, MIPS Magnum - MIPS Magnum 3000, MIPS Magnum - MIPS Magnum R4000, MIPS Magnum - Components, MIPS Magnum - Processors, MIPS Magnum - Memory, MIPS Magnum - SCSI, MIPS Magnum - Ethernet, MIPS Magnum - Framebuffer, MIPS Magnum - Serial and Parallel I/O, MIPS Magnum - Floppy disk, MIPS Magnum - Historical development, MIPS Magnum - Operating Systems, MIPS Magnum - Windows NT, MIPS Magnum - RISC/os, MIPS Magnum - NetBSD and OpenBSD, MIPS Magnum - Linux, MIPS Magnum - Emulation

Read more here: » MIPS Magnum: Encyclopedia II - MIPS Magnum - Operating Systems

The first commercial MIPS CPU, model, the R2000, was announced in 1985. It added multiple-cycle multiply and divide instructions in a somewhat independent on-chip unit. New instructions were added to retrieve the results from this unit back to the execution core. Ironically, the result-retrieving instructions were interlocked, which improved compiled code density but made the MIPS name meaningless. The R2000 could be booted either big-endian or little-endian. It had thirty-two 32-bit general purpose registers, but no condition ...

See also:

MIPS architecture, MIPS architecture - History, MIPS architecture - MIPS CPU family, MIPS architecture - Applications, MIPS architecture - Other models and future plans, MIPS architecture - MIPS cores, MIPS architecture - MIPS Programming and Emulation, MIPS architecture - Summary of R3000 instruction set, MIPS architecture - Memory to register transfer instructions, MIPS architecture - Register to memory transfer instructions, MIPS architecture - Register to register move instructions, MIPS architecture - Common arithmetic instructions, MIPS architecture - Common logic instructions bitwise, MIPS architecture - Common shift instructions, MIPS architecture - Branching and jump instructions, MIPS architecture - Some other important instructions

Read more here: » MIPS architecture: Encyclopedia II - MIPS architecture - MIPS CPU family