A peripheral-oriented microcomputer system

The inherent low cost afforded by MOS/LSI technology has been widely exploited in the functional areas of CPU´s, ROM´s, and RAM´s. Much less attention has been given to I/O and peripheral controller applications. In many microcomputer systems, as in conventional computer systems, the cost of I/O and peripheral control may far overshadow CPU costs. This paper describes an integrated-systems design which makes full use of MOS/LSI capabilities for all commonsystems functions. In this approach, intelligence is distributed throughout the system instead of being concentrated in the CPU. A single-chip floppy-disk controller is described to illustrate the capability of MOS/LSI in peripheral control.