03-13-1970 PDP-11 Minicomputer Introduced
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| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman-Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Computer Engineering Computer Science Electrical Engineering History of Science and Technology |
| Special Topic(s): | |
| Learning Resource Type: |
Community - Blog |
| Media Type: |
Unknown |
| Author(s): |
Gordon Bell |
| Description: | Engineering Pathway's "Today in History" blog for March 13 by Gordon Bell. Excerpt: "Today in History - March 13,1970 - PDP-11 minicomputer introduced by DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) and remained in active production until 1996. It was one of the most popular 16-bit minicomputers ever produced. PDP-11 and its successor, the VAX-11, lived over almost three decades during the time DEC rose to number two computer manufacturer, and then was purchased by Compaq, who in turn was purchased by HP. The architecture was done by my former CMU student, Harold McFarland. (I was a consultant to DEC while on the CMU faculty 1966-1972). The PDP-11 was known for at least two innovations: the Unibus for interconnecting the computer’s components and the architecture using General Registers. Both concepts were derived while writing the book Computer Structures with Allen Newell. Andy Knowles was in charge of the group. The marketing ads featured the Unibus, a 56 conductor ribbon cable to which the processor, memories, and various I/O control units attached. The initial ads for the PDP-11 featured the ribbon cable bus and a scissors and the notion that anything could be connected to it—making it ideal as a component of a larger system. This is what DEC said about it “The PDP-11/20 was the first minicomputer to interface all system elements - processor, memory and peripherals - to a single, bi-directional, asynchronous bus. The UNIBUS enabled fast devices to send, receive or exchange data without intermediate buffering in memory. The PDP-11 became the world's most successful family of minicomputers.†The manual has a description in ISP, the language that Allen Newell and I developed to describe computer instruction sets aka instruction set architectures (ISAs)." |
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| Related Resources | |
| Keywords: | PDP-11 Gordon Bell history of computing |
| Is Component of: |
"Today in History" Blog of the Engineering Pathway Digital Library |
| Usage Tip | |
| Use of Resource: |
History of technology written by a maker of that history. |
| Difficulty: |
Medium |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | March 2008 |
| Platform/Format: |
WWW |
| Cost: |
Free |
| Download URL: | http://www.k-grayengineeringeducation.com/blog/index.php/2012/03/ |
| Metadata: |
IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
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