🚀 go-pugleaf

in <3318c1b3.1360668@news.demon.co.uk>,
:  Simon Thompson (simon@tyrant.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: On Sat, 1 Mar 1997 03:47:41 GMT, mzenier@netcom.com (Mark Zenier)
: wrote: 

: >Sorry.  According to my 1977 General Instruments Semi. division
: >(Microchip's corporate predecessor) databook, it was orginally
: >Programmable Intelligent Computer, but a few years later mutated
: >into Programmable Intelligent Controller.
...
: GI also generated a 16 bit microprocessor, called the CP1600, in the
: early 70s. This was a reasonable microprocessor, but not particularly
: good at handling i/os. For some very specific applications where good
: i/o handling was needed, GI designed a Peripheral Interface Controller
: (or PIC for short), in around 1975. It was designed to be very fast,
: since it was i/o handling for a 16 bit machine, but didn't need a huge
: amount of functionality, so its microcoded instruction set was small.

: Hopefully, you can see what's coming....yes, the architecture designed
: in '75 is substantially the PIC16C5x architecure today. Granted, the
: 1975 version was manufactured in NMOS, and was only available in
: masked ROM versions, but still a good little uC. The market, however,
: didn't particularly think so, and the PIC remained designed in at a
: handful of large customers only.

This smells of revisionist history.  The CP1600 was a pared down
variation of a PDP-11 and would be just as capable of I/O as any
comparable low end high integration minicomputer of the day.  (That chip
was typical GI quirky.  It was a 16 bit machine but the instruction set
only used 10 bits, And GI made 10 bit ROMs for program storage).  At
that point in time, machines were boxes full of boards connected with a
bus and I/O would have been implemented at the functional level of
boards.

A chapter in a computer architecture text from 1982, "Computer
Structures: Principles and Examples" states some of the design issues
for the PIC16xx family.  It was designed as a more powerful competitor
to the 4 bit TMS1000, the main single chip controller of that time.
(Although the 8048 and 3870 actually ended up the winners, IMHO).

But as for the name, you don't call a Pentium a 586, or Windows 95 by
Chicago, Spokane, Humptulips, or what ever city name used for the
internal development at Microsoft.  Likewise, the PIC1650 was named in
the datasheets as "Programmable Intelligent Computer" back in 1977, and
according to a history of the chip in "Computer Structures" was changed
to "Programmable Intelligent Controller" in the 1979 literature.

Unless you can come up with some sales literature that predates that,
I'd say the Peripheral is a matter of poor memory and spin.

Mark Zenier  mzenier@eskimo.com  mzenier@netcom.com