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Unearthing my 1996 windowed OS in machine code for Am29000 homebrew computer

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Re: Unearthing my 1996 windowed OS in machine code for Am29000 homebrew computer

#11

Post by rob74 »

> The AMD Am29000 processor came out in 1987, also announced as the world's fastest processor (do you see a meme here?) and it could process one instruction every cycle, so indeed it was fast.

The AMD 29k - the fastest CPU you never heard of? No, seriously, I am quite interested in computer hardware, and Computer Architecture by Patterson/Hennessy was required reading during my studies, but I can't say I ever heard of this CPU architecture, which is "based on the seminal Berkeley RISC" (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Am29000). And it seems to have been quite widely used, but not in an actual computer (except for this one)...

Re: Unearthing my 1996 windowed OS in machine code for Am29000 homebrew computer

#12

Post by AnotherGoodName »

rob74 wrote: post #11

> The AMD Am29000 processor came out in 1987, also announced as the world's fastest processor (do you see a meme here?) and it could process one instruction every cycle, so indeed it was fast. The AMD 29k - the fastest CPU you never heard of? No, seriously, I am quite interested in computer hardware, and Computer Architecture by Patterson/Hennessy was required reading during my studies, but I can't say I ever heard o…

You might have heard of the x86 cpu the AMD K5 that competed against the Pentium?

Well that was basically an am29000 but with an x86 instruction decoder front end. The architecture was that good it was competitive 10years later.

Think of the am29000 as an incredibly influential research project that flowed into all of AMDs future CPUs in some way or another.

Re: Unearthing my 1996 windowed OS in machine code for Am29000 homebrew computer

#14

Post by taolson »

rob74 wrote: post #11

> The AMD Am29000 processor came out in 1987, also announced as the world's fastest processor (do you see a meme here?) and it could process one instruction every cycle, so indeed it was fast. The AMD 29k - the fastest CPU you never heard of? No, seriously, I am quite interested in computer hardware, and Computer Architecture by Patterson/Hennessy was required reading during my studies, but I can't say I ever heard o…

Yep, it wound up as the main CPU in a bunch of laser-printers, as well as Apple's 8*24GC QuickDraw accelerator card for the Macintosh, and as part of the flight-control computer on Boeing 777s, among many other embedded system designs.

Re: Unearthing my 1996 windowed OS in machine code for Am29000 homebrew computer

#15

Post by rbanffy »

Somewhere in my collection I have an AMD 29K-based tablet that was used in São Paulo's stock exchange trading floor. It had a huge IR LED array that, I assume, was used to transmit orders to receivers installed near the monitors. I managed to boot it from ROM, but it seemed the machine was waiting for the transmitter to send it its boot image.

Would have been an interesting project. Considering the size of the array, I'd be able to control all TVs from the building one block down.

Re: Unearthing my 1996 windowed OS in machine code for Am29000 homebrew computer

#16

Post by rbanffy »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #12
rob74 wrote: post #11

> The AMD Am29000 processor came out in 1987, also announced as the world's fastest processor (do you see a meme here?) and it could process one instruction every cycle, so indeed it was fast. The AMD 29k - the fastest CPU you never heard of? No, seriously, I am quite interested in computer hardware, and Computer Architecture by Patterson/Hennessy was required reading during my studies, but I can't say I ever heard o…

You might have heard of the x86 cpu the AMD K5 that competed against the Pentium? Well that was basically an am29000 but with an x86 instruction decoder front end. The architecture was that good it was competitive 10years later. Think of the am29000 as an incredibly influential research project that flowed into all of AMDs future CPUs in some way or another.

> Well that was basically an am29000 but with an x86 instruction decoder front end.

Sad. A 29K saddled with an ugly and kludgy ISA.

Re: Unearthing my 1996 windowed OS in machine code for Am29000 homebrew computer

#17

Post by rob74 »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #12
rob74 wrote: post #11

> The AMD Am29000 processor came out in 1987, also announced as the world's fastest processor (do you see a meme here?) and it could process one instruction every cycle, so indeed it was fast. The AMD 29k - the fastest CPU you never heard of? No, seriously, I am quite interested in computer hardware, and Computer Architecture by Patterson/Hennessy was required reading during my studies, but I can't say I ever heard o…

You might have heard of the x86 cpu the AMD K5 that competed against the Pentium? Well that was basically an am29000 but with an x86 instruction decoder front end. The architecture was that good it was competitive 10years later. Think of the am29000 as an incredibly influential research project that flowed into all of AMDs future CPUs in some way or another.

Wow, I wasn't aware of that either! I didn't have an AMD K5 PC, but (IIRC) a K6-III - did that still have the same underlying architecture?

Re: Unearthing my 1996 windowed OS in machine code for Am29000 homebrew computer

#18

Post by kjs3 »

rob74 wrote: post #11

> The AMD Am29000 processor came out in 1987, also announced as the world's fastest processor (do you see a meme here?) and it could process one instruction every cycle, so indeed it was fast. The AMD 29k - the fastest CPU you never heard of? No, seriously, I am quite interested in computer hardware, and Computer Architecture by Patterson/Hennessy was required reading during my studies, but I can't say I ever heard o…

It's the 'other' major processor that shipped with register windows along with SPARC and i960. Very popular in the embedded world.

Re: Unearthing my 1996 windowed OS in machine code for Am29000 homebrew computer

#19

Post by taolson »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #12
rob74 wrote: post #11

> The AMD Am29000 processor came out in 1987, also announced as the world's fastest processor (do you see a meme here?) and it could process one instruction every cycle, so indeed it was fast. The AMD 29k - the fastest CPU you never heard of? No, seriously, I am quite interested in computer hardware, and Computer Architecture by Patterson/Hennessy was required reading during my studies, but I can't say I ever heard o…

You might have heard of the x86 cpu the AMD K5 that competed against the Pentium? Well that was basically an am29000 but with an x86 instruction decoder front end. The architecture was that good it was competitive 10years later. Think of the am29000 as an incredibly influential research project that flowed into all of AMDs future CPUs in some way or another.

> Well that was basically an am29000 but with an x86 instruction decoder front end.

The K5 was based upon a 29K-family design, but it was actually an un-released superscalar project code-named "Jaguar", rather than just a 29K with an x86 decoder.

Re: Unearthing my 1996 windowed OS in machine code for Am29000 homebrew computer

#20

Post by dboreham »

rob74 wrote: post #11

> The AMD Am29000 processor came out in 1987, also announced as the world's fastest processor (do you see a meme here?) and it could process one instruction every cycle, so indeed it was fast. The AMD 29k - the fastest CPU you never heard of? No, seriously, I am quite interested in computer hardware, and Computer Architecture by Patterson/Hennessy was required reading during my studies, but I can't say I ever heard o…

This is because history gets written by the victors.
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