The 3081/e Emulator, a Processor for Use in on - Line and off - Line Arrays *

l Modular architecture separated execution units with distributed microcode. Large memory up to 7 Mbytes of separated program and data memory configurable in l/2 Mbyte units. FORTRAN 77 fully supported, with the exception of I/O instructions, including double precision 64 bit floating point thus giving results identical bit for bit to an IBM CPU. Conservative design of execution units maximum chip propagation delay times used in calculating critical timing paths. Flexible high speed interface -easily adapted to different external bus specifications. The 3081/E has 64 bit internal data paths capable of a 64 MByte/set transfer rate. High performance results indicate agreement with the design estimate of > 1 unit IBM 370/168. The upper limit depends on how efficiently the program pipelines in the 3081/E. Attractive price -performance large incremental processing power at low incremental cost. Hardware simplicity pipelining complexity is handled by a software package that performs code optimisation whilst translating IBM object code to 3081/E microcode.