Microprocessors - High end

Summary form only given, as follows. The rapid pace of advance in IC technology is bieng taken advantage of in increasingly powerful microprocessors. Two main trends have emerged. First, the low end microprocessor, which affords the sheer complexity of the chips making it possible to put all of the computing circuitry (CPU, memory, I/O) on one chip, which may take 15/20,000 transistors to realize. This feature provides for a low cost total system, a trend covered in an earlier evening session. The high end microprocessors are more of a broad stream with a number of channels, emphasizing the more powerful single chip CPU functions. The greater power can come either through chip complexity or through higher speed technology. Greater chip complexity allows more parallelism and/or more sophisticated data manipulation functions within the instruction set. Sixteen bit chips with minicomputer capability are now available. New 8-bit machines with rich instruction repertoires now put more powerful software in the hands of users, and facilitate the use of higher level languages. Higher speed technologies give, of course, greater machine throughput; e.g., cycle times of 100p or less. The traditional emphasis on bipolar technology continues mostly through bit sliced T2L and ECL machines, but complete 16 bit bipolar chips are now also available in CDI technology. The silicon-onsapphire approach to high speed MOS, long in the wings, now seems to be emerging, embodied in some new and powerful chips. Presumably, at least some of the high end machines of today will emerge as the core of low end machines of tomorrow, making possible more sophisticated functions in the single chip microcomputer. These and the other trends in the high end microprocessor field will be covered.