
HP 3000 Series 33: 16-bits of Sapphire - protomyth
http://www.cpushack.com/2016/11/26/hp-3000-series-33-16-bits-of-sapphire/
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jcoffland
These machines bring back a lot of nostalgia for me. I first learned Unix on a
HP 9000 550. I played around a bit with an HP 300 and envied the HP 3000
series. Later I went even further back in time and purchased an HP 1000E. It
was a lot of fun getting it working but RTE-A was not a very exciting OS.
These machines were already quite old when I got a hold of them back in the
early 90s.

[http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=581](http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=581)

[http://www.hpmuseum.net/exhibit.php?class=3&cat=33](http://www.hpmuseum.net/exhibit.php?class=3&cat=33)

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mark-r
I first learned programming on an HP 3000 time-sharing system. Back in the
70's, Basic only. I was quite surprised to see that the line had not stagnated
at that point, since that was both my first and last exposure to it.

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Cieplak
How long until we can buy germanium or gallium arsenide chips with switching
rates/clock speeds in the hundreds of gigahertz or low terahertz? My (probably
wrong) understanding is that this is feasible now but researchers are still
developing efficient and scalable manufacturing processes.

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dom0
This isn't really feasible due to the limited propagation speed of em-waves
(ie. electronic signals). I mean, sure, it's probably possible to get to, say,
50 or 100 GHz with very deep pipelines (ie. only limited propagation of
signals in each cycle), but we've already seen 15 years ago that deep
pipelines basically don't work for general purpose computing.

Additionally the frequency-dependent losses are unlikely to fundamentally
change.

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mattn82
SoS is typically used in hardware that's exposed to ionizing radiation. I
suppose it has other favorable characteristics (heat, performance, etc) but
I'm no expert...

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serf
in the article :

"Sapphire is an excellent insulator which wels reduce leakage currents, as
well as spurious currents from such things as radiation. Radiation tolerance
is perhaps what SoS became known for most, but its low power performance was
what HP was after in the 1970’s."

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userbinator
_SoS is a form of Silicon on Insulator, a manufacturing method that is very
common in today’s IC’s (using Silicon Dioxide)_

Really? As far as I know SoI is still somewhat specialised and although there
may be huge quantities of some ICs produced using it, the majority of designs
are still bulk silicon.

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wtallis
AMD used SoI for their CPUs from 130nm through 32nm. IBM has also done a lot
of SoI chips, and GlobalFoundries is still marketing FD-SOI for things like RF
applications.

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rbanffy
Is there an emulator só se can get a feel of MPE?

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jsjohnst
> Even today the HP 3000 is supported by a third party (Stromasys) who makes
> an emulator allowing native MPE programs to run on a modern Intel processor.

Seems the article answered that question and gives a starting point for your
search. Good luck and write up your experience if you feel inclined! :)

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rbanffy
I read the article. I was expecting something more like MESS. Also, an image
from where the OS can run or be installed is needed. Not sure what's the
license status. The latest I can run on my Hercules is MVS 3.8j.

