The MC88110 was a

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...

developed by

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...

that implemented the

88000 The 88000 (m88k for short) is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Motorola during the 1980s. The MC88100 arrived on the market in 1988, some two years after the competing SPARC and MIPS. Due to the late start and extensive delays ...

instruction set architecture In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA) is an abstract model that generally defines how software controls the CPU in a computer or a family of computers. A device or program that executes instructions described by that ISA, ...

(ISA). The MC88110 was a second-generation implementation of the 88000 ISA, succeeding the MC88100. It was designed for use in

personal computer A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...

s and

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or computational science, scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating syste ...

History

The first technical description of the MC88110 was given in November 1991 at the Microprocessor Forum held in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

. The microprocessor was introduced in 1992, operating at 50 MHz. Users were

Data General Data General Corporation was an early minicomputer firm formed in 1968. Three of the four founders were former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Their first product, 1969's Data General Nova, was a 16-bit minicomputer intended to ...

in their AViiON servers, Harris in

real-time Real-time, realtime, or real time may refer to: Computing * Real-time computing, hardware and software systems subject to a specified time constraint * Real-time clock, a computer clock that keeps track of the current time * Real-time Control Syst ...

UNIX systems and Motorola in their

single-board computers A single-board computer (SBC) is a complete computer built on a single circuit board, with microprocessor(s), memory, input/output (I/O) and other features required of a functional computer. Single-board computers are commonly made as demonstr ...

NeXT NeXT, Inc. (later NeXT Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc.) was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California that specialized in computer workstations for higher education and business markets, and later develope ...

was to introduce a workstation using the MC88110, the

NeXT RISC Workstation NeXT, Inc. (later NeXT Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc.) was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California that specialized in computer workstations for higher education and business markets, and later develope ...

, but they left the hardware business and cancelled the product before development had completed.

Description

It implemented extensions to the original ISA, such a separate floating-point register file, extended-precision (80-bit) floating-point data types and new integer and graphics instructions. It also implemented microarchitectural features previously non-existent in 88000 microprocessors, such as two-way

superscalar A superscalar processor (or multiple-issue processor) is a CPU that implements a form of parallelism called instruction-level parallelism within a single processor. In contrast to a scalar processor, which can execute at most one single in ...

execution, out-of-order completion and

speculative execution Speculative execution is an optimization (computer science), optimization technique where a computer system performs some task that may not be needed. Work is done before it is known whether it is actually needed, so as to prevent a delay that woul ...

. Despite these new features, which corrected some architectural deficiencies in the MC88100, the MC88110 was ultimately unsuccessful and was used in few systems. The MC88110 was succeeded by

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

microprocessors Motorola developed jointly with

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

as part of the

AIM alliance The AIM alliance, also known as the PowerPC alliance, was formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple Inc., Apple, IBM, and Motorola. Its goal was to create an industry-wide open-standard computing platform based on the IBM POWER architecture, POWE ...

, but remained available until the mid-1990s. Externally the 88110 has a

von Neumann architecture The von Neumann architecture—also known as the von Neumann model or Princeton architecture—is a computer architecture based on the '' First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC'', written by John von Neumann in 1945, describing designs discus ...

(single memory for code and data) with a

modified Harvard architecture A modified Harvard architecture is a variation of the Harvard computer architecture that, unlike the pure Harvard architecture, allows memory that contains instructions to be accessed as data. Most modern computers that are documented as Harvar ...

internally (separate instruction and data caches). MC88110 User's Manual, Figure 1-3. The MC88110 supported an optional external 256 KB to 2 MB secondary cache. The secondary cache controller was not integrated on the MC88110, but was located on a separate device, the MC88410, to reduce cost. The die contained 1.3 million transistors and measured 15 mm by 15 mm (225 mm²). It was fabricated in a 1 μm

complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss ", , ) is a type of MOSFET, metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) semiconductor device fabrication, fabrication process that uses complementary an ...

(CMOS) process. The process has three levels of aluminium interconnect and an effective channel length (the distance between the source and drain contacts of the

MOSFET upright=1.3, Two power MOSFETs in amperes">A in the ''on'' state, dissipating up to about 100 watt">W and controlling a load of over 2000 W. A matchstick is pictured for scale. In electronics, the metal–oxide–semiconductor field- ...

transistors) of 0.8 μm. The MC88110 was designed to be shrunk to a 0.8 μm process with an effective channel length of 0.65 μm without modification.

Notes

References

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Mc88110 Motorola microprocessors

Motorola 88110 The MC88110 was a microprocessor developed by Motorola that implemented the 88000 instruction set architecture (ISA). The MC88110 was a second-generation implementation of the 88000 ISA, succeeding the MC88100. It was designed for use in persona ...