HP 2100

The HP 2100 was a series of minicomputers produced by Hewlett-Packard from the mid 1960s to early 1990s. The 2100 was also a specific model in this series. The series would be renamed to HP 1000 by the 1970s and sold as real-time computers complementing the more complex IT-oriented HP 3000, and would be the starting point for a line of desktop computers. They would eventually be phased out in favor of UNIX-based RISC workstations.

HP entered the minicomputer market in 1966, along with Varian Data Machines. Later, General Automation, Computer Automation, Data General, Micro Systems, and Lockheed would also be competitors. The 2116A was the first model of the series. It was designed by HP's Dymec division, after absorbing Data Systems Inc. (DSI), a subsidiary of Union Carbide. DSI had designs for a 16-bit minicomputer called the DSI-1000, which would eventually evolve into the 2116A through HP's involvement.

The 2116A is a 16-bit word-addressed general purpose computer. Main memory is 4096 words (4K), expandable to 8K of magnetic core in mainframe, or 16K with a memory extender. The 2116A features 16 I/O slots in mainframe, a 10 MHz clock and a memory cycle time of 1.6 microseconds. The 2116A had two subsequent revisions: the 2116B added support for up to 32K with a memory extender, and the 2116C incorporated a more compact model of core memory, allowing the full 32K to be housed within the computer mainframe.

The HP 2116A’s software, with a FORTRAN compiler, assembler, linker, loader, operating system, and I/O drivers were ready at the same time as the hardware. This was quite unusual when most computer vendors would roll out the hardware first with little software. The 1967 issue of the Hewlett-Packard Journal called the HP 2116A “an unusual new instrumentation computer”.

The HP 2116A had an over sized cabinet with 16 empty card slots for interface cards. Up to 48 could be fitted with add-on modules. At introduction, HP engineers had interface for more than 20 instruments including “counters, nuclear scalers, electronic thermometers, digital voltmeters, ac/ohms converters, data amplifiers, and input scanners.” The HP 2116A’s introduction started of the age of modern automated test systems.

When HP discovered it sold more HP 2116A minicomputers for business applications than for instrumentation, HP introduced the short-lived 2115A in 1967, a cost-reduced variant of the 2116A with only 8 I/O slots, a bulky external power supply, and a 2116-style front panel. The HP 2116A of 1968 was stripped of DMA and extended arithmetic. The 2114A featured a redesigned front panel, with reduced register displays and illuminated proximity-sense switches. The 2114 saw two further revisions: the 2114B added single-channel DMA and HSIO options at the expense of a single I/O slot, and 2114C supported up to 16K maximum core in mainframe, at the expense of yet another I/O slot. The 2115A and 2114A/B/C have an 8 MHz clock and a 2.0 µs cycle time.

The Cupertino, CA based Data Systems Division (DSD - later moved to the Santa Clara, CA site) produced a long series of successful HP 21xx minicomputers that HP will not be able to kill despite five serious attempts to introduce successors, including the HP 3000. By 1978, HP was the fourth largest minicomputer manufacturer, trailing only DEC, IBM, and Data General. The 16-bit instrumentation-oriented HP 21xx architecture survived and evolved for more than 20 years, setting the stage for HP's growth to world's largest technology vendor, surpassing IBM, and the leading personal computer supplier.

2100 series architecture

There were two 16-bit accumulators, called A and B which could do most instructions such as load or add, and two 1-bit flags, called Overflow and Extend, although the A register had a few more instructions. The program counter, 15 bits, was called P. All instructions in the standard instruction set were 16 bits long. As with the roughly-contemporaneous PDP-8 from DEC, memory was word (not byte) accessible and conditional branching was done with a conditional skip followed by a jump instruction. There was no stack register.

The processor instruction-set architecture was very efficient, predating RISC architectures with some similar features 20 years later, as there were only 68 instructions. All instructions are fixed width, 16 bits wide, and all instructions executed in one memory cycle (1.6 microseconds). However, instructions could address both memory and a register, it had only two accumulators instead of a series of general registers (such as the PDP-11). The register-reference instructions could execute multiple operations per instruction (RISC processors generally execute only one operation per instruction) [ [http://www.hp9825.com/html/hp_2116.html HP 2116] ]

The early machines in the series (including the 2116) were direct-execution machines but the 2100 and later machines were microprogrammed. The 2100 offered a writable control store allowing the user to extend and change the vertical microcode.

The 2100-series of processors is one of the systems that the SIMH multi-system emulator is able to run.

Descendants and variants

The HP 9810, 9820 and 9830 desktop computers used a slow, serialized TTL version of the 2116 CPU, although they did not ultimately use any of the operating system or application software, instead relying on user-friendly ROM-based interpreters such as BASIC which worked when powered up and integrated keyboards and displays rather than disks or standard terminals. In 1975, HP introduced the BPC, the world's first 16-bit microprocessor, using HP's NMOS-II process. The BPC was usually but not always packaged in a ceramic hybrid module with the EMC and IOC chips, which added extended math and I/O instructions. The hybrid was developed as the heart of the new 9825 desktop computer. The later 9845 workstation added an MMU chip.

The major differences between the original 2116 architecture and the BPC microprocessor are a completely redesigned I/O structure, and the removal of the ability to execute multiple levels of indirect addressing. The elimination of multiple indirection made an extra bit available in the memory reference instructions, allowing the maximum memory capacity to be increased from 32K to 64K. The BPC also added an input allowing the "current page" to be PC-relative, rather than a power-of-two aligned page.

The BPC was used in a wide range of HP computers, peripherals, and test equipment, until it was discontinued in the late 1980s.

The HP 2100 is one of many 8 and 16 bit machine architectures [http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Digital-Equipment-Corporation said to be inspired] by the PDP-8, a design philosophy still used by the popular Intel x86 processors today. These can be characterized by a small number of accumulators (such as A and B) rather than a relatively large number of regular registers (such as R0-R7 or R15) found on the PDP-11.

Poland manufactured HP2114B clone called PRS-4.

Instruction overview

* Arithmetic – Add, Increment, And, Or, Exclusive or
* Program Control – Skip, Jump, Jump to Subroutine
* Shift/Rotate – Arithmetic and Logical Shifts, 16- and 17-bit Rotates
* Optional – Multiply, Divide, 32-bit Load and Store, 32-bit Shifts

Model overview

Early models (1966-1970)

Core memory, hardwired CPU. Similar to a PDP-8 that has been pumped up to 16 bits and two accumulators.
* 2116A
* 2116B
* 2116C
* 2115A
* 2114A
* 2114B
* 2114C

econd generation (1970-1974)

Core memory, microprogrammed CPU. An option allowed user microprogramming. Front panel buttons were lit on by small incandescent light bulbs which burnt out with use. A fact did not matter to regular users who knew the 1 and 0 sequences to load the paper tape 'loader-loader' instructions without seeing the panel's lights.
* 2100A
* 2100S

21MX (1975-1979)

Semiconductor memory, expandable to 1,048,576 words (one megaword). Front panel buttons were lit on by small red LEDs which were the longest lasting part on the system.
* M-series – 2105A, 2108A, 2112A (has a blue line on front panel)
* E-series – 2109A, 2113A (yellow line on front panel - E for Extended)
* F-series – 2111F, 2117F (red line on front panel - F for Floating point)

The 21MX ran the HP RTE (Real Time) Operating System (OS). They started out as refrigerator-sized rack computers with lights and switches on the front panels. The last models would use a 1 chip processor and fit under a desk using a console rather than front panel.

The new L and A series models had HP-IB interface ability but as with all HP systems at that point in time, the blinking LED lights were removed from the front panel. Despite customer demands for a Real-Time ability and HP R&D's efforts using an installable Real-Time card, the RTE-A OS was not as good at Real-Time operations as RTE on a 21MX. This was an important reason this computer was hard to kill: many companies use Real-Time operations to: take a measurement, make a change (turn on or off a pump, heater, a valve; speed-up or slow-down a motor), etc.

L-Series (1980)

* HP1000L SOS (Silicon on Sapphire) CPU and I/O processors

A-Series (1981-1996)

each addressable up to 32 MB of RAM.

1981:
* A600 based on AMD2900 bit-slice processor, 1 MIPS, 53kFLOPS
* A600+ based on AMD2900 bit-slice processor, supports code and data separation, optional ECC (error correcting) memory. Codename: LIGHTNING

1982??:
* A700 HP own CPU, optional hardware floating point processor, 1MIPS, 204kFLOPS, microprogramming, optional ECC memory. Codename: PHOENIX

1984:
* A900 provides pipelined datapath, 3MIPS, 500kFLOPS ECC memory. Codename MAGIC

1986:
* A400 first single board CPU including 4 serial lines; CPU on CMOS-40 VLSI Technology, 512kB RAM on board. Codename Yellowstone

1992:
* A990 2 208-pin CMOS (Application-specific integrated circuits) ASIC's, 298 instructions, supports up to 512MB RAM

Operating systems

The operating system shell even in the late 70s was very primitive, with a single-level file system. The command to run a FORTRAN compiler would look something like:

meaning run the f77 program with source file, object, and exe. A modern Unix command line uses an implied run, and files have dot extensions or internally stored characteristic ("magic number") to distinguish between different file types for a given project. It may have been the most primitive of any competitive minicomputer at the time. The HP 1000 also was one of the few minicomputers that restricted names to only 5 characters, rather than the 6 common at the time, which made porting and even writing programs a challenge. Newer RTE-A operating system for HP 1000 provided conventional directory structure with 16.4 file names.

GRAPHICS/1000 was a FORTRAN 5 character name implementation of AGL, which was based on the HP 9830 graphics commands.

Alternatively, a specific dual-processor configuration was sold that could run HP Time-Shared BASIC. In this system, a well-equipped 2116 acted as the main processor while a 2114 acted as the communications multiplexer, simulating many UART channels in software. Later, 2100-series processors were substituted.

Introduction dates

* HP 2116A – Nov 1966
* HP 2115A – Nov 1967
* HP 2116B – Sep 1968
* HP 2114A – Oct 1968
* HP 2000A – Nov 1968 (2116-based timesharing system)
* HP 2114B – Nov 1969
* HP 2116C – Oct 1970
* HP 2114C – Oct 1970

References

*The Hewlett Packard Company (1968). " [http://kmt.hku.nl/~hans/pdf_files/hp2114a.pdf HP 2114A Specifications"]
*The Hewlett Packard Company (1969). " [http://kmt.hku.nl/~hans/pdf_files/hp2114b.pdf HP 2114B Specifications"]
*The Hewlett Packard Company (1970). " [http://kmt.hku.nl/~hans/pdf_files/hp2114c.pdf HP 2114C Specifications"]
*The Hewlett Packard Company (1967). " [http://kmt.hku.nl/~hans/pdf_files/hp2115a.pdf HP 2115A Specifications"]
*The Hewlett Packard Company (1968). " [http://kmt.hku.nl/~hans/pdf_files/hp2116b.pdf HP 2116B Specifications"]
*The Hewlett Packard Company (1970). " [http://kmt.hku.nl/~hans/pdf_files/hp2116c.pdf HP 2116C Specifications"]
*Leibson, Steve (2006). " [http://www.hp9825.com/ HP9825.COM: The Story of the Little Computer That Could!"]
*The Hewlett Packard Company. " [http://www.hp.com/products1/rte/index.html HP1000/RTE Home page."]

External links

* [http://www.hp9825.com/html/hp_2116.html HP: The Accidentally, On-Purpose Computer Company]
* [http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/HP/HP.2100.1972.102646165.pdf 1972 HP 2100 Brochure]
* [http://www.das.ufsc.br/~gb/images/hp-2100-system.jpgrack mounted HP2100 system] Guilherme Bittencourt's site image showing from top to bottom, left: a 21MX E-series computer, 2100A computer, 2100 power supply (PS), 7905 disc drive, 13037 drive controller; right: paper tape reader, paper tape punch, 7900 disk drive, 7900 PS.
* [http://hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=411 HP Computer Museum: 2000F Timeshare System]
* [http://www.hpmuseum.net/exhibit.php?class=3&cat=37 HP Computer Museum: 1000-L & A Series]

Notes