Possibly the best-known 12-bit CPU is the

PDP-8 The PDP-8 is a 12-bit minicomputer that was produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was the first commercially successful minicomputer, with over 50,000 units being sold over the model's lifetime. Its basic design follows the pioneeri ...

and its relatives, such as the Intersil 6100 microprocessor produced in various forms from August 1963 to mid-1990. Many analog to digital converters (ADCs) have a 12-bit resolution. Some

PIC microcontroller PIC (usually pronounced as ''"pick"'') is a family of microcontrollers made by Microchip Technology, derived from the PIC1650"PICmicro Family Tree", PIC16F Seminar Presentation originally developed by General Instrument's Microelectronics ...

s use a 12-bit word size. 12 binary digits, or 3 nibbles (a 'tribble'), have 4096 (10000

octal The octal numeral system, or oct for short, is the radix, base-8 number system, and uses the Numerical digit, digits 0 to 7. This is to say that 10octal represents eight and 100octal represents sixty-four. However, English, like most languages, ...

, 1000

hexadecimal In mathematics and computing, the hexadecimal (also base-16 or simply hex) numeral system is a positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of 16. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using 10 symbols, h ...

) distinct combinations. Hence, a microprocessor with 12-bit memory addresses can directly access 4096

words A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no conse ...

(4 Kw) of word-addressable memory. At a time when six-bit character codes were common a 12-bit word, which could hold two characters, was a convenient size. IBM

System/360 The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems that was announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. It was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applic ...

instruction formats use a 12-bit displacement field which, added to the contents of a base register, can address 4096 bytes of memory.

List of 12-bit computer systems

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president unti ...

PDP-5 The PDP-5 was Digital Equipment Corporation's first 12-bit computer, introduced in 1963. History An earlier 12-bit computer, named LINC has been described as the first minicomputer and also "the first modern personal computer." It had 2,048 12 ...

***

DECmate DECmate was the name of a series of PDP-8-compatible computers produced by the Digital Equipment Corporation in the late 1970s and early 1980s. All of the models used an Intersil 6100 (later known as the Harris 6100) or Harris 6120 (an improved I ...

, a personal computer based on the Intersil 6100 **

PDP-12 The PDP-12 (Programmed Data Processor) was created by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1969 and was marketed specifically for science and engineering.see Mini-Computer section and press see more, then press see more again It was the third i ...

** PDP-14 * Ford EEC I automotive engine control unit ** Toshiba TLCS-12 microprocessor *

Intersil Intersil is an American semiconductor company headquartered in Milpitas, California. As of February 24, 2017, Intersil is a subsidiary of Renesas. The previous Intersil was formed in August 1999 through the acquisition of the semiconductor bus ...

IM6100 microprocessor (PDP-8-compatible) * Control Data Corporation ** CDC 160 series computers **

CDC 6600 The CDC 6600 was the flagship of the 6000 series of mainframe computer systems manufactured by Control Data Corporation. Generally considered to be the first successful supercomputer, it outperformed the industry's prior recordholder, the IBM ...

- Peripheral Processor (PP) *

National Cash Register NCR Corporation, previously known as National Cash Register, is an American software, consulting and technology company providing several professional services and Electronics, electronic products. It manufactures Self-checkout, self-service kio ...

NCR 315 The NCR 315 Data Processing System, released in January 1962 by NCR, is a second-generation computer. All printed circuit boards use resistor–transistor logic (RTL) to create the various logic elements. It uses 12-bit ''slab'' memory structur ...

Scientific Data Systems Scientific Data Systems (SDS), was an American computer company founded in September 1961 by Max Palevsky and Robert Beck, veterans of Packard Bell Corporation and Bendix, along with eleven other computer scientists. SDS was an early adopter of i ...

SDS 92 *

Nuclear Data, Inc. Nuclear Data Incorporated was a manufacturer of scientific measuring devices for high energy physics laboratories. Application areas included X-ray analysis and radiation monitoring. In the 1960s, they built minicomputers to automate their labor ...

ND812 The 12-bit ND812, produced by Nuclear Data, Inc., was a commercial minicomputer developed for the scientific computing market. Nuclear Data introduced it in 1970 at a price under $10,000 (). Description The architecture has a simple programmed ...

PC12 minicomputer PC12 by Artronix was a minicomputer built with 7400-series TTL technology and ferrite core memory. Computers were manufactured at the Artronix facility in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. The instruction set architecture was adapted from the LINC, ...

Ferranti Argus Ferranti's Argus computers were a line of industrial control computers offered from the 1960s into the 1980s. Originally designed for a military role, a re-packaged Argus was the first digital computer to be used to directly control an entire fact ...

LINC The LINC (Laboratory INstrument Computer) is a 12-bit, 2048-word transistorized computer. The LINC is considered by some the first minicomputer and a forerunner to the personal computer. Originally named the "Linc", suggesting the project's ori ...

, later commercialized by DEC as the

LINC-8 LINC-8 was the name of a minicomputer manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation between 1966 and 1969. It combined a LINC computer with a PDP-8 in one cabinet, thus being able to run programs written for either of the two architectures. Arch ...

Electronic Arrays 9002 The Electronic Arrays 9002, or EA9002, was an 8-bit microprocessor released in 1976. It was designed to be easy to implement in systems with few required support chips. It included 64 bytes of built-in RAM and could be directly connected to TT ...

(12-bit addressing but 8-bit byte)

References

External links

DIGITAL Computing Timeline: 12-bit architecture
Computer data {{computer-hardware-stub

List of 12-bit computer systems

See also

References

External links