Precision ArchitectureRISC(PA-RISC) orHewlett Packard Precision Architecture(HP/PAor simplyHPPA), is ageneral purpose computerinstruction set architecture(ISA) developed byHewlett-Packardfrom the 1980s until the 2000s.
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Designer | Hewlett-Packard |
---|---|
Bits | 64-bit(32→64) |
Introduced | 1986 (1996 PA-RISC 2.0) |
Version | 2.0 (1996) |
Design | RISC |
Encoding | Fixed |
Branching | Compare and branch |
Endianness | Big |
Extensions | Multimedia Acceleration eXtensions(MAX), MAX-2 |
Open | No |
Successor | PA-WideWord →Itanium[1] |
Registers | |
General-purpose | 32 |
Floating point | 32 64-bit (16 64-bit in PA-RISC 1.0) |
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The architecture was introduced on 26 February 1986, when theHP 3000 Series 930andHP 9000 Model 840computers were launched featuring the first implementation, the TS1.[2][3]HP stopped selling PA-RISC-based HP 9000 systems at the end of 2008 but supported servers running PA-RISC chips until 2013.[4]PA-RISC was succeeded by theItanium(originally IA-64) ISA, jointly developed by HP andIntel.[5]
History
editIn the late 1980s, HP was building four series of computers, all based onCISCCPUs. One line was theIBM PC compatibleInteli286-based Vectra Series, started in 1986. All others were non-Intelsystems. One of them was the HP Series 300 ofMotorola 68000-basedworkstations,another Series 200 line of technical workstations based on a customsilicon on sapphire(SOS) chip design, the SOS based 16-bitHP 3000classic series, and finally the HP 9000 Series 500minicomputers,based on their own (16- and 32-bit)FOCUSmicroprocessor.
The Precision Architecture is the result of what was known inside Hewlett-Packard as theSpectrumprogram.[6]HP planned to use Spectrum to move all of their non-PC compatible machines to a single RISC CPU family.
In early 1982, work on the Precision Architecture began at HP Laboratories, defining the instruction set and virtual memory system. Development of the firstTTLimplementation started in April 1983. With simulation of the processor having completed in 1983, a final processor design was delivered to software developers in July 1984. Systems prototyping followed, with "lab prototypes" being produced in 1985 and product prototypes in 1986.[7]
The first processors were introduced in products during 1986. It has thirty-two 32-bit integer registers and sixteen 64-bit floating-point registers. The HP Precision Architecture has a singlebranch delay slot.This means that the instruction immediately following a branch instruction is executed before the program's control flow is transferred to the target instruction of the branch.[8][9]An HP Precision processor also includes a Processor Status Word (PSW) register. The PSW register contains various flags that enable virtual addressing, protection,interruptions,and other status information.[10]The number of floating-point registers was doubled in the 1.1 version to 32 once it became apparent that 16 were inadequate and restricted performance. The architects included Allen Baum, Hans Jeans, Michael J. Mahon,Ruby Bei-Loh Lee,Russel Kao,Steve Muchnick,Terrence C. Miller, David Fotland, and William S. Worley.[11]
The first implementation was the TS1, a central processing unit built from discretetransistor–transistor logic(74F TTL) devices. Later implementations were multi-chip VLSI designs fabricated in NMOS processes (NS1 and NS2) and CMOS (CS1 and PCX).[12] They were first used in a new series ofHP 3000machines in the late 1980s – the 930 and 950, commonly known at the time as Spectrum systems, the name given to them in the development labs. These machines ranMPE-XL.TheHP 9000machines were soon upgraded with the PA-RISC processor as well, running theHP-UXversion ofUnix.
Other operating systems ported to the PA-RISC architecture includeLinux,OpenBSD,NetBSD,OSF/1,NeXTSTEP,andChorusOS.[13]
An interesting aspect of the PA-RISC line is that most of its generations have no level 2cache.Instead large level 1 caches are used, initially as separate chips connected by a bus, and later integrated on-chip. Only the PA-7100LC and PA-7300LC have L2 caches. Another innovation of the PA-RISC is the addition of vector instructions (SIMD) in the form ofMAX,which were first introduced on the PA-7100LC.
Precision RISC Organization,an industry group led by HP, was founded in 1992, to promote the PA-RISC architecture. Members includedConvex,Hitachi,Hughes Aircraft,Mitsubishi,NEC,OKI,Prime,Stratus,Yokogawa,Red Brick Software,andAllegro Consultants, Inc.
The ISA was extended in 1996 to 64 bits, with this revision named PA-RISC 2.0. PA-RISC 2.0 also addedfused multiply–addinstructions, which help certain floating-point intensive algorithms, and theMAX-2SIMD extension, which provides instructions for accelerating multimedia applications. The first PA-RISC 2.0 implementation was thePA-8000,which was introduced in January 1996.
CPU specifications
editImage | Model | Marketing name |
Year | Frequency [MHz] |
Memory Bus [MB/s] |
Process [μm] |
Transistors [millions] |
Die size [mm2] |
Power [W] |
Dcache [KB] |
Icache [KB] |
L2 cache [MB] |
ISA | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
TS-1 | ? | 1986 | 8 | ? | ? | — | — | ? | 64 | 64 | — | 1.0 | [14] | |
CS-1 | ? | 1987 | 8 | ? | 1.6 | 0.164 | 72.93 | 1 | — | 0.25 | — | 1.0 | [15] | |
NS-1 | ? | 1987 | 25/30 | ? | 1.7 | 0.144 | 70.56 | ? | 16-128 | 16-128 | — | 1.0 | [14][16]Unified L1 cache | |
NS-2 | ? | 1989 | 25/30 | ? | 1.5 | 0.183 | 196 | 27 | 512 | 512 | — | 1.0 | [17] | |
PCX | ? | 1990 | 50/60 | ? | 1.0 | 0.196 | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | 1.0 | [14] | |
PCX-S | PA-7000 | 1991 | 66 | ? | 1.0 | 0.58 | 201.6 | ? | 256 | 256 | — | 1.1a | ||
PCX-T | PA-7100 | 1992 | 33–100 | ? | 0.8 | 0.85 | 196 | ? | 2048 | 1024 | — | 1.1b | ||
PCX-T | PA-7150 | 1994 | 125 | ? | 0.8 | 0.85 | 196 | ? | 2048 | 1024 | — | 1.1b | ||
PCX-T' | PA-7200 | 1994 | 120 | 960 | 0.55 | 1.26 | 210 | 30 | 1024 | 2048 | — | 1.1c | ||
PCX-L | PA-7100LC | 1994 | 60–100 | ? | 0.75 | 0.9 | 201.6 | 7–11 | — | 1 | 2 | 1.1d | ||
PCX-L2 | PA-7300LC | 1996 | 132–180 | ? | 0.5 | 9.2 | 260.1 | ? | 64 | 64 | 0–8 | 1.1e | ||
PCX-U | PA-8000 | 1996 | 160–180 | 960 | 0.5 | 3.8 | 337.68 | ? | 1024 | 1024 | — | 2.0 | ||
PCX-U+ | PA-8200 | 1997 | 200–240 | 960 | 0.5 | 3.8 | 337.68 | ? | 2048 | 2048 | — | 2.0 | ||
PCX-W | PA-8500 | 1998 | 300–440 | 1920 | 0.25 | 140 | 467 | ? | 1024 | 512 | — | 2.0 | [18] | |
PCX-W+ | PA-8600 | 2000 | 360–550 | 1920 | 0.25 | 140 | 467 | ? | 1024 | 512 | — | 2.0 | [18] | |
PCX-W2 | PA-8700(+) | 2001 | 625–875 | 1920 | 0.18 | 186 | 304 | <[email protected] V | 1536 | 768 | — | 2.0 | ||
Mako | PA-8800 | 2003 | 800–1000 | 6400 | 0.13 | 300 | 361 | ? | 768/core | 768/core | 0 or 32 | 2.0 | ||
Shortfin | PA-8900 | 2005 | 800–1100 | 6400 | 0.13 | ? | ? | ? | 768/core | 768/core | 0 or 64 | 2.0 |
See also
editReferences
edit- ^"Inventing Itanium: How HP Labs helped create the next-generation chip architecture".HP Labs.1 June 2001. Archived fromthe originalon 7 February 2002.Retrieved24 March2024.
- ^"One Year Ago". (26 February 1987).Computer Business Review.
- ^Rosenbladt, Peter (September 1987)."In this Issue"(PDF).Hewlett-Packard Journal.38(9): 3.Archived(PDF)from the original on 26 April 2019.Retrieved8 June2018.
... In the March 1987 issue we described the HP 3000 Series 930 and HP 9000 Model 840 Computers, which were HP's first realizations of HP Precision Architecture in off-the-shelf TTL technology....
- ^"How long will HP continue to support HP 9000 systems?".Archived fromthe originalon 19 February 2012.Retrieved29 February2008.
- ^"HP Completes Its PA-RISC Road Map With Final Processor Upgrade".Archivedfrom the original on 13 February 2008.Retrieved24 July2007.
- ^Worley, William S. (August 1986)."Hewlett-Packard Precision Architecture: The Processor"(PDF).Hewlett-Packard Journal.37(8):4–22.
The HP Precision Architecture development program, known within HP as the Spectrum program,...
- ^Fotland, David A.; Shelton, John F.; Bryg, William R.; La Fetra, Ross V.; Boschma, Simin I.; Yeh, Allan S.; Jacobs, Edward M. (March 1987)."Hardware Design of the First HP Precision Architecture Computers".Hewlett-Packard Journal.38(3):4–17.Retrieved6 October2020.
- ^"Hewlett-Packard Precision Architecture: The Processor"(PDF).p. 10.Retrieved2 December2023.
- ^DeRosa, John A.; Levy, Henry M. (1987)."An Evaluation of Branch Architectures".Proceedings of the 14th annual international symposium on Computer architecture.pp.10–16.doi:10.1145/30350.30352.ISBN0-8186-0776-9.Retrieved27 January2024.
- ^"Hewlett-Packard Precision Architecture: The Processor"(PDF).p. 6.Retrieved7 December2023.
- ^Smotherman, Mark (2 July 2009).Recent Processor ArchitectsArchived10 September 2012 at theWayback Machine.
- ^Paul Weissmann. "Early PA-RISC Systems"Archived2 October 2014 at theWayback Machine.
- ^Walpole, Jonathan; Hakanson, Marion; Inouye, Jon; Konuru, Ravi (January 1992).Porting Chorus to the PA-RISC: Project Overview(PDF)(Report). Oregon Graduate Institute Of Science And Technology.Archivedfrom the original on 12 June 2023.
- ^abc"PA-RISC Processors"
- ^Marston, A.; et al. (1987). "A 32b CMOS single-chip RISC type processor".1987 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference. Digest of Technical Papers.pp.28–29.doi:10.1109/ISSCC.1987.1157145.S2CID61007482.
- ^Yetter, J.; et al. (1987). "A 15 MIPS 32b Microprocessor".ISSCC 1987.pp.26–27.doi:10.1109/ISSCC.1987.1157220.S2CID58782915.
- ^Boschma, Brian D.; et al. (1989). "A 30 MIPS VLSI CPU".IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference, 1989 ISSCC. Digest of Technical Papers.pp.82–83, 299.doi:10.1109/ISSCC.1989.48191.S2CID53932361.
- ^ab"HP L1000 & L2000 (rp5400/rp5450) Servers"Archived2 January 2018 at theWayback Machine,openpa.net
- ^"Third-Party PA-RISC Processors from Hitachi, Winbond, OKI – OpenPA.net".
External links
edit- LostCircuitsHewlett Packard PA8800 RISC Processor overview
- HP's documentation– page down for PA-RISC, architecture PDFs available
- OpenPA.netComprehensive PA-RISC chip and computer information
- chipdb.orgImages of different PA-RISC processors