| Honeywell 6000 Series | |
| Manufacturer: | Honeywell Inc. |
| Os: | GCOS, Multics, CP-6 |
| Predecessor: | GE-600 series |
The Honeywell 6000 series computers were rebadged versions of General Electric's 600-series mainframes manufactured by Honeywell International, Inc. from 1970 to 1989. Honeywell acquired the line when it purchased GE's computer division in 1970 and continued to develop them under a variety of names for many years. In 1989, Honeywell sold its computer division to the French company Groupe Bull who continued to market compatible machines.
The high-end model was the 6080, with performance approximately 1 MIPS. Smaller models were the 6070, 6060, 6050, 6040, and 6030. In 1973, a low-end 6025 was introduced.[1] The models with an even number as the next-to-last digit of the model number included an Enhanced Instruction Set feature (EIS), which added decimal arithmetic and storage-to-storage operations to the original word-oriented architecture.[2]
In 1973, Honeywell introduced the 6180, a 6000-series machine with addressing modifications to support the Multics operating system. In 1974, Honeywell released the 68/80 which added cache memory in each processor and support for a large (2-8 million word) directly addressable memory.[3] In 1975, the 6000-series systems were renamed as Level 66, which were slightly faster (to 1.2 MIPS) and offered larger memories. In 1977, the line was again renamed 66/DPS, and in 1979 to DPS-8, again with a small performance improvement to 1.7 MIPS.[4] The Multics model was the DPS-8/M.[5]
6000-series systems were said to be "memory oriented" — a system controller in each memory module arbitrated requests from other system components (processors, etc.). Memory modules contained 128 K words of 1.2 μs 36-bit words; a system could support one or two memory modules for a maximum of 256 K words (1 MB of 9-bit bytes). Each module provided two-way interleaved memory.
Devices called Input/Output Multiplexers (IOMs) served as intelligent I/O controllers for communication with most peripherals. The IOM supported two different types of peripheral channels: Common Peripheral Channels could handle data transfer rates up to 650,000 cps; Peripheral Subsystem Interface Channels allowed transfers up to 1.3 million cps.
The 6000 supported multiple processors and IOMs.[6] Each processor and IOM had four ports for connection to memory; each memory module had eight ports for communication with other system components, with an interrupt cell for each port.[7]
Memory protection and relocation was accomplished using a base and bounds register in the processor, the Base Address Register (BAR). The IOM was passed the contents of the BAR for each I/O request, allowing it to use virtual rather than physical addresses.
A variety of communications controllers could also be used with the system. The older DATANET-30 and the DATANET 305— intended for smaller systems with up to twelve terminals attached to an IOM.[8] The DATANET 355 processor attached directly to the system controller in a memory module and was capable of supporting up to 200 terminals.
The CPU operates on 36-bit words,[9] and addresses are 18 bits. The Accumulator Register (AQ) was 72 bits, or could be accessed separately as two 36-bit registers (A and Q) or four 18-bit registers (AU, AL, QU, QL). An eight-bit Exponent Register contained the exponent for floating point operations (the mantissa was in AQ). There were eight eighteen-bit index registers X0 through X7.[10]
The 18-bit Base Address Register (BAR) contains the base address and number of 1024-word blocks assigned to the program (the 6180 used segmentation rather than the BAR). The system also includes several special-purpose registers: an 18-bit Instruction Counter (IC) and a 27-bit Timer Register (TR) with a resolution of 2 μs. Sets of special registers are used for fault detection and debugging.
The EIS instruction set adds eight additional 24-bit registers AR0 through AR7. These registers contain an 18-bit word address, a 2-bit address of a character within the word, and a 4-bit address of a bit within the character.
Address register format:
1 11 2 2
0 7 89 0 3
+-------------------+--+----+
| Word | C| Bit|
+-------------------+--+----+
The 6000-series machine's basic instruction set has more than 185 single-address one-word instructions. The basic instructions are one word; the instruction format is an extension of that of the GE-600 series, with the opcode field extended to 10 bits by adding bit 27 as the low-order bit; that bit is zero in all GE-600 series instructions.
The format for basic and one-word EIS instructions is:
1 1 2 2 2 3 3
0 7 8 7 8 9 0 5
+------------------+-----------+-+-+------+
| Y | OP |I|0| Tag |
+------------------+-----------+-+-+------+
EIS instructions longer than one word are two-word to four-word instructions depending on the specific instruction. The addresses point either to operands or to operand descriptors, which contain the actual operand address and additional information. The format of those instructions is:
1 1 2 2 2 3
word 0 7 8 7 8 9 5
+------------------+----------+-+------+
0 | Variable field | OP |I| MF1 |
+------------------+----------+-+------+
1 |Operand descriptor 1 or indirect word |
+--------------------------------------+
2 .Operand descriptor 2 or indirect word . (optional)
+- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - +
3 .Operand descriptor 3 or indirect word . (optional)
+- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - +
Data is stored in big-endian format. Bits are numbered starting from 0 (most-significant) to 35 or 71 (least-significant).[11]
The following peripherals were available for the 6000-Series machines in 1971.
The primary operating system for the line was the General Comprehensive Operating System (GCOS), which Honeywell originally inherited from General Electric's GECOS. In 1978 Honeywell introduced a rewritten version GCOS 8, which supported virtual memory. The Multics OS also ran on selected CPU models.[13] [14]
In 1974, Honeywell purchased Xerox Data Systems (XDS), and developed a work-alike of the Xerox operating system CP-V as CP-6 to run on DPS-8 systems in order to retain Xerox' loyal customer base.