Honeywell 6000 Series
ManufacturerHoneywell Inc.
Release date1970 (1970)
Operating systemGCOS, Multics, CP-6
PredecessorGE-600 series

The Honeywell 6000 series computers were rebadged versions of General Electric's 600-series mainframes manufactured by Honeywell International, Inc. from 1970 to 1989. Honeywell acquired the line when it purchased GE's computer division in 1970 and continued to develop them under a variety of names for many years. In 1989, Honeywell sold its computer division to the French company Groupe Bull who continued to market compatible machines.

Models

The high-end model was the 6080, with performance approximately 1 MIPS. Smaller models were the 6070, 6060, 6050, 6040, and 6030. In 1973, a low-end 6025 was introduced.[1] The models with an even number as the next-to-last digit of the model number included an Enhanced Instruction Set feature (EIS), which added decimal arithmetic and storage-to-storage operations to the original word-oriented architecture.[2]

In 1973, Honeywell introduced the 6180, a 6000-series machine with addressing modifications to support the Multics operating system. In 1974, Honeywell released the 68/80 which added cache memory in each processor and support for a large (2-8 million word) directly addressable memory.[3] In 1975, the 6000-series systems were renamed as Level 66, which were slightly faster (to 1.2 MIPS) and offered larger memories. In 1977, the line was again renamed 66/DPS, and in 1979 to DPS-8, again with a small performance improvement to 1.7 MIPS.[4] The Multics model was the DPS-8/M.[5]

Hardware

A Honeywell Level 66/60 mainframe computer with its cabinet door open

6000-series systems were said to be "memory oriented" — a system controller in each memory module arbitrated requests from other system components (processors, etc.). Memory modules contained 128 K words of 1.2 μs 36-bit words; a system could support one or two memory modules for a maximum of 256 K words (1 MB of 9-bit bytes). Each module provided two-way interleaved memory.

Devices called Input/Output Multiplexers (IOMs) served as intelligent I/O controllers for communication with most peripherals. The IOM supported two different types of peripheral channels: Common Peripheral Channels could handle data transfer rates up to 650,000 cps; Peripheral Subsystem Interface Channels allowed transfers up to 1.3 million cps.

The 6000 supported multiple processors and IOMs.[6] Each processor and IOM had four ports for connection to memory; each memory module had eight ports for communication with other system components, with an interrupt cell for each port.[7]

Memory protection and relocation was accomplished using a base and bounds register in the processor, the Base Address Register (BAR). The IOM was passed the contents of the BAR for each I/O request, allowing it to use virtual rather than physical addresses.

A variety of communications controllers could also be used with the system. The older DATANET-30 and the DATANET 305— intended for smaller systems with up to twelve terminals attached to an IOM.[8] The DATANET 355 processor attached directly to the system controller in a memory module and was capable of supporting up to 200 terminals.

CPU

The CPU operates on 36-bit words,[9] and addresses are 18 bits. The Accumulator Register (AQ) was 72 bits, or could be accessed separately as two 36-bit registers (A and Q) or four 18-bit registers (AU,AL,QU,QL). An eight-bit Exponent Register contained the exponent for floating point operations (the mantissa was in AQ). There were eight eighteen-bit index registers X0 through X7.[10]

The 18-bit Base Address Register (BAR) contains the base address and number of 1024-word blocks assigned to the program (the 6180 used segmentation rather than the BAR). The system also includes several special-purpose registers: an 18-bit Instruction Counter (IC) and a 27-bit Timer Register (TR) with a resolution of 2 μs. Sets of special registers are used for fault detection and debugging.

The EIS instruction set adds eight additional 24-bit registers AR0 through AR7. These registers contain an 18-bit word address, a 2-bit address of a character within the word, and a 4-bit address of a bit within the character.

  Address register format:
                     1 11 2  2
   0                 7 89 0  3
  +-------------------+--+----+
  |      Word         | C| Bit|
  +-------------------+--+----+

Instruction formats

The 6000-series machine's basic instruction set has more than 185 single-address one-word instructions.[11] The basic instructions are one word; the instruction format is an extension of that of the GE-600 series, with the opcode field extended to 10 bits by adding bit 27 as the low-order bit; that bit is zero in all GE-600 series instructions.

The format for basic and one-word EIS instructions is:

                         1 1         2 2 2 3    3
        0                7 8         7 8 9 0    5
       +------------------+-----------+-+-+------+
       |          Y       |  OP       |I|0| Tag  |
       +------------------+-----------+-+-+------+
  • Y is the address field (18 bits).
  • OP is the opcode (10 bits).
  • I is the interrupt inhibit bit.
  • Tag indicates the type of address modification to be performed (6 bits); some tags not supprted in the GE-600 series are supported by the 6000 series.

EIS instructions longer than one word are two-word to four-word instructions depending on the specific instruction. The addresses point either to operands or to operand descriptors, which contain the actual operand address and additional information. The format of those instructions is:

                         1 1        2 2 2    3
 word   0                7 8        7 8 9    5
       +------------------+----------+-+------+
   0   |  Variable field  |  OP      |I| MF1  |
       +------------------+----------+-+------+
   1   |Operand descriptor 1 or indirect word |
       +--------------------------------------+
   2   .Operand descriptor 2 or indirect word . (optional)
       +- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - +
   3   .Operand descriptor 3 or indirect word . (optional)
       +- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - +
  • Variable field contains information relating to the specific instruction (18 bits).
  • OP is the EIS opcode (10 bits).
  • I is the interrupt inhibit bit.
  • MF1 describes the address modification to be performed for descriptor 1 (6 bits). If operands 2 and 3 are present the variable field contains MF2 and MF3.

Data formats

Data is stored in big-endian format. Bits are numbered starting from 0 (most-significant) to 35 or 71 (least-significant).[11]

  • Binary fixed-point data is stored in twos-complement. Half-word (18-bits), word (36-bits) and double-word (72-bits) operands are supported. Multiply and divide instructions are provided which treat the operand as a binary fraction rather than an integer.
  • Binary floating-point data can be single precision (36 bits) or double precision (72 bits). In either case the exponent is eight bits, twos-complement binary. The mantissa is either 28 or 64 bits, twos-complement binary.
  • Character data is either 6-bit BCD or 9-bit ASCII.

Peripherals

The following peripherals were available for the 6000-Series machines in 1971.[8]

  • Control console, attached to the IOM, was a printer-keyboard that operated at 15 characters per second (cps).
  • DSS180 removable disk storage subsystem provided up to 18 drives using disks physically compatible with IBM 2316 disks used in the 2314.[12] The disks were formatted to provide 384 six-bit characters per sector and 27,648,000 characters per pack. The average seek time was 34 milliseconds (ms) and data transfer rate was 416,000 cps.
  • DSS190 removable disk storage subsystem provided up to 16 drives using disks compatible with IBM 3336-11 drives used in the 3330. The disks were formatted with variable-length sectors in multiples of 384 characters. One pack could hold up to 133,320,000 characters. The average access time was 30 ms and data transfer rate was 1,074,000 cps.
  • DSS270 disk storage subsystem provided up to 20 modules of head-per-track disk. Capacity per module was 15.3 million characters. Average access time was 26 ms, and maximum transfer rate was 333,000 cps.
  • DSS167 disk storage subsystem allowed up to eight online disk drives plus an offline spare. Per disk capacity was 15 million characters; average access time was 87.5 ms and data transfer rate was 208,000 cps.
  • DSS170 removable disk storage subsystem allowed up to eight online disk drives plus an offline spare. Per disk capacity was 27.5 million characters; average access time was 72.5 ms and data transfer rate was 416,000 cps.
  • Magnetic tape was available in a variety of models, all using open-reel ½ inch magnetic tape. Various models could read and write seven-track or nine-track tape with densities from 200 bits per inch (bpi) to 1600 bpi at rates of 37.5 inches per second (ips) to 150 ips. The maximum transfer rate was 266 characters per second (cps). All models connected to the system through the IOM.
  • Line printers were the PRT300 train printer capable of printing at 1150 lines per minute (lpm) and the PRT201 at 1200 lpm.
  • Punched card equipment consisted of the CRZ201 card reader capable of reading up to 900 80-column cards per minute (cpm) and the CPZ201 card punch which could punch up to 300 80-column cards per minute.

Software

The primary operating system for the line was the General Comprehensive Operating System (GCOS), which Honeywell originally inherited from General Electric's GECOS. In 1978 Honeywell introduced a rewritten version GCOS 8, which supported virtual memory. The Multics OS also ran on selected CPU models.[13][14]

In 1974, Honeywell purchased Xerox Data Systems (XDS), and developed a work-alike of the Xerox operating system CP-V as CP-6 to run on DPS-8 systems in order to retain Xerox' loyal customer base.[4]

References

  1. ↑ "Honeywell puts the squeeze on big computer costs". The Montreal Gazette. September 12, 1973. Retrieved May 11, 2014.
  2. ↑ "Honeywell Series 6000" (PDF). Bitsavers.org. The Series 6000 systems employ a memory-oriented architecture.
  3. ↑ PROJECT MAC PROGRESS REPORT XI (PDF) (Report). December 1974. p. 107. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-02-25.
  4. 1 2 Bellec, Jean. "from GECOS to GCOS8". an history of Large Systems in GE, Honeywell, NEC and Bull. Archived from the original on July 2, 2014. Retrieved May 8, 2014.
  5. ↑ Thelen, Ed. "Honeywell DPS8". Retrieved May 8, 2014.
  6. ↑ "New Scientist". February 25, 1971. p. 425. Honeywell makes no secret of the fact that its new 6000 series evolved from ...
  7. ↑ Honeywell (September 1, 1980). Large Systems Product Guide (PDF). p. Section 3.3.1, pg. 164.
  8. 1 2 Honeywell (1971). Series 6000 Summary Description (PDF).
  9. ↑ "The Honeywell Years".
  10. ↑ "Honeywell DPS8 - Ed Thelen". The Multics machine in this line was the Honeywell 6180 ... But all were .. 8 index-register, A and Q register machines
  11. 1 2 Honeywell, Inc. (July 1974). GMAP Pocket Guide (PDF).
  12. ↑ "70C 480 11_7209_Honeywell_Series_6000 11 7209 Honeywell". DSS181 REMOVABLE DISK STORAGE SUBSYSTEM: Provides fairly rapid ... physically compatible with the IBM 2316 Disk Pack
  13. ↑ "Multics history".
  14. ↑ "Multics features".
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