Semiconductor & Computer Engineering
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|transistors = 16,000<ref>[http://soton.mpeforth.com/flag/jfar/vol6/no1/article1.pdf The Harris RTX 2000 Microcontroller - Tom Hand, Harris Semiconductor]</ref> | |transistors = 16,000<ref>[http://soton.mpeforth.com/flag/jfar/vol6/no1/article1.pdf The Harris RTX 2000 Microcontroller - Tom Hand, Harris Semiconductor]</ref> | ||
|cores = 1 | |cores = 1 | ||
| − | |clock = 7.5 | + | |clock = 7.5 MHz |
|bus_width = 16-bit | |bus_width = 16-bit | ||
|lithography = [[3μm|3 μm]] | |lithography = [[3μm|3 μm]] | ||
Revision as of 03:05, 31 December 2013
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The Novix NC4016 was a 16-bit, stack machine microprocessor designed by Novix Inc in 1985 primarily for the Forth programming language. The NC4016 directly executes the primitives of the high-level Forth programming language. The NC4016 was capable of executing typical Forth programs as much as 20 times faster than the Motorola 68000. Novix also offered the NC4000 Small C Compiler which was compatible with the NC4016 microprocessor.
In 1988, the NC4016 design was licensed and improved by Harris Semiconductor which later rebranded the chip as the RTX2000, a radiation hardened version suitable for spacecrafts use.
The NC4016 was later replaced by the NC5016 and later by the NC6016.
History
In 1983 Charles H. Moore founded Novix, Inc, a company with the goal of designing a microprocessor that would execute FORTH programs optimally. The chip, which was originally named NC4000, was released as the NC4016 in June of 1985. The NC4016 was a completely stack machine. The opcodes manipulated the stack directly.
The microprocessor, which was fabricated using 3 μm HCMOS process technology, has a 7.5MHz clock capable of 10MIPS.
Implementation
Due to the limitations in the gate array technology of the time, the chip did not have any on-chip memory. Three separate modules were required: for the return stack, data stack, and program and data stack.