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Here's a little more info for those of you who are computer history
buffs:
On Sun, 2004-02-01 at 22:52, Ted Gould wrote:
> Here are the currently used instruction sets that I can think of
> (without research):
>=20
> -- IA32 (Intel Processors, AMD 32-bit, Cyrix (are they still around?),
> VIA and others)
These chips were primarily used in PCs and PC clones. Cyrix, however,
seems to have sold their product line to VIA who now markets derivatives
as their C3 and C3-2 CPUs (used in the Epia line of Mini-ITX
motherboards).
> -- MIPS (SGI and Cray, plus lots of embedded stuff (they sell cores
> now))
I'm not 100% sure, but I think a MIPS CPU was used in the Playstation
gaming console as well as several Handheld PC (windows CE) devices.
> -- ARM (New Palms - also popular in embedded)
Originally used in the Amstrad Acorn line of computers, ARM has a bit of
a clouded history. There seems to be an ARM consortium, and then there
is a derivative set of chips by Intel called the StrongARM. Both ARM and
StrongARM chips are used primarily in embedded devices such as the Palm,
Sharp Zaurus SL-5000D, and the Nintendo GameBoy Advance. In all, though
ARM chips are the most pervasive CPUs used in mobile and embedded
devices.
> -- PPC & PPC64 (Developed by AIM (Apple, IBM and Motorola) used in
> Cisco, Tivo, Apple and lots of others)
PPC and PPC64 chips are also used in embedded systems such as the old
Baynet Routers and some Cisco switches and routers.
> -- SPARC (Developed and used by Sun, I've heard there are some embedded
> SPARC cores out there?)
AFAIK, SPARC was used primarily only in Sun machines.
> -- Alpha (Dieing if not dead already, I think HP is still shipping some
> stuff for support contracts)
The Alpha line was originally a competitor to the Intel Xeon server line
which was originally created by Digital. IIRC, the Alpha was the first
CPU to break the 1GHz barrier (though I'm probably off on that remark).
Few motherboards with this chip still exist and are no longer supported
as Digital was bought by Compaq which merged with HP. =3Dop
=20
> -- 68K (Developed by Motorola originally, kinda died, was revived by the
> ColdFire product line (which removed a large part of the instruction
> set) and is used in small embedded devices)
The 68000 was the chip that started it all, along with the earlier 6800
line of CPUs. Originally, the little brother to the 6800, the 6510 was
used in the VIC-20, Commodore 64. An earlier 6502 was used in Apple, and
the 68000 line was used in the original Commodore brand of Amigas.
Note on the Amiga line of computers: Commodore is no longer a company,
but the staff that originally created the Amiga spun off their own
company called Amiga, Inc. From here, they made several derivative
products (such as the A1200, A5000, A5000T) which were based off of the
68020, 68030, and 68040 lines of Motorola CPUs. Amiga has been bought
and sold so many times now, that they seem to have lost their identity.
Instead of supporting or building new hardware, they claim to be a
software development company only now.
The Amiga line of systems had a unique "chipset" in the form of three
separate CPUs -- one for graphics, another for sound, and then the main
CPU for other calculations (sometimes referred to as the ECS, OCS, or
AGA chipsets). AFAIK, these separate CPUs were all proprietary to Amiga,
Inc. and never saw use in other products.
> -- PIC (Developed by Microchip and used in _very_ small embedded
> environments, I don't think this one will run Linux)
AFAIK, the PICs created by Microchip cannot run a full operating system
such as Linux at this time, since most -- if not all -- of the program
code resides in a tiny (max I've heard of is a 128k) flash buffer on
chip. There are other limitations (such as CPU speed, lack of an MMU,
etc.) that prevent Linux from running on this line of chips.
Keep your eyes on Microchip, however, as they seem to be coming out with
more and more interesting chips (PICs with RF trancievers -- mm!). I
wouldn't be surprised if we hear about a Microchip PIC that runs a
stripped down Linux kernel eventually. =3Do)
As a side note about Microchip, they are based here in Arizona and
support the Chandler Hamilton High School FIRST[1] robotics team.
> These are the ones that I can think of right now - but I'm sure there
> are others. I don't remember the instruction set that the SH8 uses...=20
I can think of several others:
SH3 - Created by Hitachi as the Super-H line of processors and used
primarily as an embedded CPU, it's bigger brother, the SH4, has
instructions specifically designed for 3D matrix transforms. I have yet
to see the SH4 actually used for this task, however.
S/390 - Created by IBM for use in their S/390 minicomputers. Seems to
have it's own architecture which is similar to that of the Digital
PDP/11. Not sure if the actual CPU name is S/390 or not -- there seems
to be limited documentation on this.
CRIS - Seems to be used by Axis Communications in their embedded
products. I couldn't find anything else about it online. =3Dop
Z80/Z8000 - CPU used by the Texas Instruments line of calculators, but
also previously used in early microcomputers. This line is heavily based
off of the original Intel 8080, and was created by Intel engineers after
they split off of the parent company and formed Zilog. A derivative
Z80-GB is used in the GameBoy and GameBoy Color -- there may be other
places it is used. The Z80 had a unique capability of swapping the
current working set of register values with another hidden set of
registers called "shadow registers".
RS/6000 - RISC CPUs used for scalable computing in IBMs RS/6000
parallel computing cabinets.
You can find _tons_ more information on CPUs and such at "Great
Microprocessors of the Past and Present"[2]. Additionally, you can find
other, more specific details about a CPU line or specific CPU at the
"CPU Info Center"[3] and "Microprocessor instruction set cards"[4].
Lotsa fun stuff out there. =3Do)
[1] -
http://www.usfirst.org
[2] -
http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/jbayko/cpu.html
[3] -
http://bwrc.eecs.berkeley.edu/CIC/
[4] -
http://vmoc.museophile.org/cards/
--=20
June Tate *
mondoshawan@theonelab.com *
http://www.theonelab.com
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