A museum for the history of processors and CPUs and how they have changed our world. Includes Intel, AMD as well as lesser known companies such as Signetics.
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Chip that come into the museum are all scanned on a Canon 5600F flatbed scanner. It has a good (there is some better though) depth of field, and its fast. Typically chips are scanned at 300dpi, or for small ones (or ones that have a die visible) 600dpi. This keep the file sizes reasonable, yet still allows them to be…
Making the rounds this week is the Computer World story of a Stratus Tech. computer at a parts manufacturer in Michigan. This computer has not had an unscheduled outage in 24-years, which seems rather impressive. Originally installed in 1993 it has served well. In 2010 it was awarded for being the longest serving…
This time we will talk about one unique Intel processor, which did not appear on the retail market and whose reviews you will not find on the Internet. This processor was produced purely by special order for one well-known manufacturer of computer equipment. Also in the framework of this article I will try to assemble…
Back in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s Sandia National Laboratory (in Albuquerque NM USA) began building the capacity to design, fab, and test IC’s at scale (packaging was handled by Fairchild and Allied Signal). Why would a National Laboratory need the capacity to do this? To provide components that were not…
Many CPUs have been used in space craft, space stations and other such probes. Such CPUs must be highly reliable, and very durable. The temperatures in space, even with heaters, can vary widely. The radiation that a system is exposed too can be immense. So when designing one of these systems designers don't always use…
The socialist bloc of countries that arose after World War II was not a monolithic entity, it had significant country and cultural differences. A number of countries stood apart, one of them was socialist Romania. The leadership of Romania pursued a relatively free domestic and foreign policy, while remaining within…
This board isn’t strictly a CPU but it is a processor of sorts. I actually purchased this board as it was described as a DEC board, with not a great picture, having not seen a DEC board with LOGIC ALUs on it I bought it. When it arrived I found it wasnt DEC at all but DSC, Digital Services Corporation. DSC was a video…
The Soviet-made 1801VM2 CPU (a binary-compatible implementation of the PDP11 instruction set and QBUS interface) was developed in 1982. The 1801VM2 is a further development of the earlier 1801VM1 doubling the original 5MHz clock speed. From a constructive standpoint this CPU is a completely independent development.
NEC had a cross license agreement with Intel dating back to April of 1976 that allowed each company to make/sell products based on each others patents. This was particularly important in the 1970’s as having a viable ‘second source’ for your designs was considered critical for it to be viable in the market. This was…
Original Nanoprocessor prototypes from 1974-75. Note hand written wafer number, open die cover and early part number (94332)
Typically when collecting something, be it coins, cars or CPU’s having the most pristine unblemished example is highly desirable. However, sometimes, the best example is one that isn’t perfect, in coin collecting it may be a rare double struck coin, or some other flaw that actually makes the coin more valuable.
On this site you can read about thousands of processors models. And every year it is more and more difficult to write about some new (old) processors, since everything has been known for a long time. But there are also exceptions to the rule which we love to find. In 2021, I learned about one unusual processor, the…
The GDP was exclusively object oriented - normal linear memory access wasn't allowed, and there was hardware support for data hiding, methods, inheritance, late binding, and access protection, and it was promoted as being ideal for the Ada programming language. To enforce this, permission and type checks for every…