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The Web Site to Remember National Semiconductor's Series 32000 Family

34 points by picture 3y ago

Veserv 3y ago
https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2021/05/102792135-05-01-acc.pdf https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20... Oral History of Les Kohn, one of the two designers of the NS32000 microarchitecture (the other being Dan O'Dowd). He discusses it and the Xerox PARC inspired network-connected workstation on pages 9-14.
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  That would be this Dan O'Dowd: https://dawnproject.com https://dawnproject.com
chasil 3y ago
I used an Encore Multimax in my college parallel programming class that ran a proprietary UNIX on a member of this processor family. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encore_Computer#Specifications https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encore_Computer#Specificatio...
- flyinghamster 3y ago
  One of my courses at UIUC used a Sequent Balance 8000, which also ran on the NS32K (and was a direct competitor). Ours was a 6-CPU system, and it had no problems handling system loads that would have brought the neighboring Pyramid 90x to its knees. We were only using it for general programming coursework and not for anything specific to parallel programming, but it was head and shoulders above the usual systems.
  - chasil 3y ago
    I thought Dynix was x86-only, but I guess not. The wiki for Dynix doesn't appear to know any of this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DYNIX https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DYNIX The Sequent wiki does have a paragraph on the Balance. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequent_Computer_Systems#Balance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequent_Computer_Systems#Bal...
musicale 3y ago
It's great that there is an open-source Verilog implementation for FPGAs (running at 50MHz, highly respectable compared to ~30MHz hardware) and apparently a NetBSD version that will run on it.
relwin 3y ago
Got a hold of a NS32081 and put in on protoboard in my turbo 8088 PC, interfacing via the 8-bit I/O bus (late 1980's.) Wrote a simple Turbo-C interface to read/write FPU instructions and data. Operations with 32-bit floats were about 4x faster than Turbo-C's floating point emulation. Was straightforward to program as I recall. But I can't recall where that protoboard went...
michrassena 3y ago
I was pleased to see a page with photos (and PDF documentation) of the Ceres systems which were used to develop the Oberon operating system. http://cpu-ns32k.net/Ceres.html http://cpu-ns32k.net/Ceres.html
xref 3y ago
I thought National Semi was the company founded/run by that renown dirtbag CEO who among other things told some nuns to eat shit, but that was actually Cypress Semi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._J._Rodgers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._J._Rodgers
dboreham 3y ago
The 32032 was my favorite CPU as a kid. Today, thanks to eBay, I actually own one!

34 points by picture 3y ago

https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2021/05/102792135-05-01-acc.pdf https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20... Oral History of Les Kohn, one of the two designers of the NS32000 microarchitecture (the other being Dan O'Dowd). He discusses it and the Xerox PARC inspired network-connected workstation on pages 9-14.

082349872349872 3y ago
That would be this Dan O'Dowd: https://dawnproject.com https://dawnproject.com

chasil 3y ago

I used an Encore Multimax in my college parallel programming class that ran a proprietary UNIX on a member of this processor family. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encore_Computer#Specifications https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encore_Computer#Specificatio...

flyinghamster 3y ago
One of my courses at UIUC used a Sequent Balance 8000, which also ran on the NS32K (and was a direct competitor). Ours was a 6-CPU system, and it had no problems handling system loads that would have brought the neighboring Pyramid 90x to its knees. We were only using it for general programming coursework and not for anything specific to parallel programming, but it was head and shoulders above the usual systems.
- chasil 3y ago
  I thought Dynix was x86-only, but I guess not. The wiki for Dynix doesn't appear to know any of this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DYNIX https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DYNIX The Sequent wiki does have a paragraph on the Balance. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequent_Computer_Systems#Balance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequent_Computer_Systems#Bal...

musicale 3y ago

It's great that there is an open-source Verilog implementation for FPGAs (running at 50MHz, highly respectable compared to ~30MHz hardware) and apparently a NetBSD version that will run on it.

relwin 3y ago

Got a hold of a NS32081 and put in on protoboard in my turbo 8088 PC, interfacing via the 8-bit I/O bus (late 1980's.) Wrote a simple Turbo-C interface to read/write FPU instructions and data. Operations with 32-bit floats were about 4x faster than Turbo-C's floating point emulation. Was straightforward to program as I recall. But I can't recall where that protoboard went...

michrassena 3y ago

I was pleased to see a page with photos (and PDF documentation) of the Ceres systems which were used to develop the Oberon operating system. http://cpu-ns32k.net/Ceres.html http://cpu-ns32k.net/Ceres.html

xref 3y ago

I thought National Semi was the company founded/run by that renown dirtbag CEO who among other things told some nuns to eat shit, but that was actually Cypress Semi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._J._Rodgers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._J._Rodgers

dboreham 3y ago

The 32032 was my favorite CPU as a kid. Today, thanks to eBay, I actually own one!