HP 3000
The HP 3000 series is a family of minicomputers released by Hewlett-Packard in 1973 after a difficult development project. It was intended to be the first minicomputer delivered with a full featured operating system with timesharing.
The early "Classic" machines were based on a 16-bit custom CISC processor. Around 1988 machines using HP's PA-RISC processors shipped in volume, bringing 32-bit addressing. Binary compatibility with the older machines was (and is) maintained.
The 3000 series operating system is called MPE and includes a built-in database called TurboIMAGE.
In 2003, HP discontinued 3000 series sales. All support will be terminated beginning Jan 1, 2007.
The 16-bit microcoded machines (Series I, II, III, 30, 33, 39, 40, 42, 44, 48, 52, 58, 64, 68, 70, 37, ...) implement a 16-bit word addressed, byte-addressable, segmented, Harvard, Stack Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). Most of the ~214 instructions are 16 bits wide. Stack operations pack 2 per 16-bit word and the remaining few are 32 bits wide. Code and data reside in variable-length segments, code, read-only, reentrant and limited to 32760 bytes and data to 65528 bytes. MPE loads code segments from program files and segmented Library (SL) files at need, up to 256 segments in one process.
CISC Implementations
- Series 30, 33: Silicon on sapphire
- Series 40, 42, 44, 48: Schottky TTL, 4 Top of stack registers, 105nS microinstruction cycle time → 9.5MHz
- Series 64, 68: ECL, 8 Top of Stack registers, 75nS microinstruction cycle time → 13MHz, 8kB cache, 60kb WCS, 2 16-bit ALUs
References
- Hewlett Package: HP3000 Computer Systems: General Information Manual; August 1983; 5953-7553
External links
- The Classic HP 3000 - detailed early history.
- Bitsavers has PDF scans of HP 3000 hardware and software manuals - but use a mirror site.
- HP 3000 Performance (text file)
- "HP SYSTEM/3000 system description" promotional material Nov 1971