[comp.arch] 100 million native instructions/sec GaAs processor

mark@mips.COM (Mark G. Johnson) (01/08/89)

In article <296@quick.COM> srg@quick.COM (Spencer Garrett) writes:
>Anybody got a reference for the DARPA Microprocessor without
>Interlocked Pipe Stages (or MIPS) Core Instruction Set
>Architecture specification?

About a year ago, two papers were published revealing Gallium Arsenide
microprocessors.   Both were sponsored by DARPA and both used the
"core-MIPS" instruction set architecture.   One was from Rockwell and
used junction field-effect transistors (MESFETs), and the other, from
Texas Instruments, used heterojunction bipolar transistors:


	Gauthier, R. V., et al, "A 150MOPS GaAs 8b Slice Processor",
	Digest of Technical Papers, 1988 International Solid State Circuts
	Conference (ISSCC), February 17, 1988, pp. 32-33.

	Whitmire, D. A., et al, "A 32b GaAs RISC Microprocessor", Digest
	of Technical Papers, 1988 International Solid State Circuts
	Conference (ISSCC), February 17, 1988, pp. 34-35.

Incidentally, don't be fooled by the trade press claims that the T.I.
device uses "I2L" logic; it doesn't.  There aren't any injectors, hence
"Integrated Injection Logic (I2L)" is a misnomer.  Instead of bipolar PNP
injectors, the T.I. device employs passive resistor pullups.  Multi-collector
drivers (pulldowns) are used.
-- 
 -- Mark Johnson	
 	MIPS Computer Systems, 930 E. Arques, Sunnyvale, CA 94086
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