The Bellmac-32 was pretty amazing for its time - yet I note that the article fails to mention the immense debt that it owes to the VAX-11/780 architecture, which preceded it by three years.
The VAX was a 32-bit CPU with a two stage pipeline which introduced modern demand paged virtual memory. It was also the dominant platform for C and Unix by the time the Bellmac-32 was released.
The Bellmac-32 was a 32-bit CPU with a two stage pipeline and demand paged virtual memory very like the VAX's, which ran C and Unix. It's no mystery where it was getting a lot of its inspiration. I think the article makes it sound like these features were more original than they were.
Where the Bellmac-32 was impressive is in their success in implementing the latest features in CMOS, when the VAX was languishing in the supermini world of discrete logic. Ultimately the Bellmax-32 was a step in the right direction, and the VAX line ended up adopting LSI too slowly and became obsolete.
rst · 5h ago
You might want to be more specific by what you mean by "modern", because there were certainly machines with demand-paged virtual memory before the VAX. It was introduced on the Manchester Atlas in 1962; manufacturers that shipped the feature included IBM (on the 360/67 and all but the earliest machines in the 370 line), Honeywell (6180), and, well... DEC (later PDP-10 models, preceding the VAX).
pinewurst · 5h ago
Also Prime as well in the 70s pre-VAX.
mjevans · 5h ago
Period might be the best word. Contemporary is also a contender I thought of first, before disqualifying it for implying 'modern'.
vintermann · 4h ago
There was also the Nord-5, which beat the VAX by another couple of years as a 32-bit minicomputer.
rkagerer · 1h ago
> With no CAD tools available for full-chip verification ... the team resorted to printing oversize Calcomp plots. The schematics showed how the transistors, circuit lines, and interconnects should be arranged inside the chip to provide the desired outputs. The team assembled them on the floor with adhesive tape to create a massive square map more than 6 meters on a side. Kang and his colleagues traced every circuit by hand with colored pencils, searching for breaks, overlaps, or mishandled interconnects.
macshome · 7h ago
The more that we find out about Bell Labs the more we all realize how much of our world they built.
We really could use a place like that today.
em3rgent0rdr · 3h ago
There is a place like that today. It is called "Nokia Bell Labs".
jll29 · 17m ago
This is a valid point.
Are there still regularly ground-breaking innovations (which ones e.g. in the last decade) coming out of the same lab today, whatever its owner or name?
willmarquis · 3h ago
Bellmac-32 went 32-bit CMOS when everyone else was still twiddling 8-bit NMOS, then got shelved before the afterparty. IEEE giving it a milestone in 2025 is basically a lifetime achievement trophy for the domino-logic DNA inside every phone SoC today late, but deserved
jandrese · 4h ago
The article handwaves over why the chip wasn't a success, which makes my first thought of "how much did each chip cost" all the more relevant. This is such an uplifting story until you think about how the 8086 is just about to wipe it off of the map.
adrian_b · 24m ago
During their early success years, Intel has made extremely few innovations. One of their few innovative products was the floating-point coprocessor 8087, which has changed completely how everybody does floating-point computations, and for which they were smart to hire external expertise (i.e. William Kahan) which has brought most of the innovative features.
On the other hand, during those years Intel has been extremely good at adopting very quickly any important innovation made by a competitor, while also succeeding to obtain better manufacturing yields, so that they were able to have greater profits, even with cheaper products.
Bellmac-32 has not been important commercially, but without it a product like Intel 80386 would have appeared only some years later.
With 80386, Intel has switched their production of CPUs from NMOS to CMOS, like also Motorola had done one year earlier with 68020. Both Intel and Motorola have drawn heavily from the experience gained by the industry with Bellmac-32.
dboreham · 3h ago
AT&T/Western Electric didn't really sell chips. They were a systems company. I actually used a machine with their VME boards (which iirc the company I worked for had been contracted to manufacture and market). Even to us the idea that Western Electric made CPUs seemed surprising. It was cool to be running System V on a desktop machine back then though.
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joezydeco · 3h ago
If you were a CS student at UIUC in the late 80s your sophomore weed-out class in C and assembly language coding was on this processor. It was a lot more fun to write for this core compared to Intel.
And it was the only processor I ever used that had a STRCPY opcode.
The VAX was a 32-bit CPU with a two stage pipeline which introduced modern demand paged virtual memory. It was also the dominant platform for C and Unix by the time the Bellmac-32 was released.
The Bellmac-32 was a 32-bit CPU with a two stage pipeline and demand paged virtual memory very like the VAX's, which ran C and Unix. It's no mystery where it was getting a lot of its inspiration. I think the article makes it sound like these features were more original than they were.
Where the Bellmac-32 was impressive is in their success in implementing the latest features in CMOS, when the VAX was languishing in the supermini world of discrete logic. Ultimately the Bellmax-32 was a step in the right direction, and the VAX line ended up adopting LSI too slowly and became obsolete.
We really could use a place like that today.
Are there still regularly ground-breaking innovations (which ones e.g. in the last decade) coming out of the same lab today, whatever its owner or name?
On the other hand, during those years Intel has been extremely good at adopting very quickly any important innovation made by a competitor, while also succeeding to obtain better manufacturing yields, so that they were able to have greater profits, even with cheaper products.
Bellmac-32 has not been important commercially, but without it a product like Intel 80386 would have appeared only some years later.
With 80386, Intel has switched their production of CPUs from NMOS to CMOS, like also Motorola had done one year earlier with 68020. Both Intel and Motorola have drawn heavily from the experience gained by the industry with Bellmac-32.
No comments yet
And it was the only processor I ever used that had a STRCPY opcode.
whats wrong with rep movsb?