A highly integrated, fault-tolerant minicomputer: the NonStop CLX

Author

Lenoski, Daniel E.

Author_Institution

Tandem Comput. Inc., Cupertino, CA, USA

fYear

1988

fDate

Feb. 29 1988-March 3 1988

Firstpage

514

Lastpage

519

Abstract

The NonStop CLX, a highly integrated version of Tandem Computers´ fault-tolerant NonStop architecture, is described. An overview of the system block diagram and a detailed description of the CLX processor are given. The processor is based on a custom CMOS chip set developed using silicon compilation techniques. The CPU microarchitecture is a hybrid of traditional minicomputer and high-performance microprocessor architectures. This merging leads to a number of novel structures including a single static RAM array that is used as writable control store, data cache, and page table cache. The processor includes a high degree of fault-checking in order to assure data integrity and fault-tolerant operation.<>

Keywords

fault tolerant computing; minicomputers; CLX processor; CPU microarchitecture; NonStop CLX; Tandem; custom CMOS chip set; data cache; data integrity; fault-checking; fault-tolerant NonStop architecture; fault-tolerant minicomputer; fault-tolerant operation; high-performance microprocessor architectures; page table cache; single static RAM array; writable control store; CMOS process; Central Processing Unit; Computer architecture; Fault tolerance; Merging; Microarchitecture; Microcomputers; Microprocessors; Read-write memory; Silicon;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Compcon Spring '88. Thirty-Third IEEE Computer Society International Conference, Digest of Papers

Conference_Location

San Francisco, CA, USA

Print_ISBN

0-8186-0828-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CMPCON.1988.4921

Filename

4921