PDP-6

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PDP-6
Manufacturer: Digital Equipment Corporation
Architecture: PDP-10
Year Design Started: March, 1963
Year First Shipped: June, 1964
Year Discontinued: 1965
Form Factor: small mainframe
Word Size: 36 bits
Logic Type: germanium and silicon transistors
Design Type: asynchronous with hardware subroutines
Instruction Speed: 4 μsec (approximately - different instructions take different amounts of time; the CPU is not synchronous)
Memory Speed: 5 μsec (inital), 2 μsec (later)
Physical Address Size: 18 bits
Virtual Address Size: 18 bits
Memory Management: single base and bounds register pair
Operating System: Monitor, ITS, WAITS, JOSS II
Predecessor(s): None
Successor(s): KA10
Price: US$120K (CPU), US$300K (system)


The MIT AI lab PDP-6 console
A System Module used in a PDP-6; this example has had its transistors salvaged from it

The PDP-6 was effectively the first model of the PDP-10; they are (mostly) object code compatible. It was built out of System Modules, DEC's predecessor to the FLIP CHIP module series (out of which the first PDP-10, the KA10, was built).

It featured 36-bit words, at the time effectively the standard for machines used for scientific computing. In a period when almost all programming was done in assembly language, it used those long words to provide a powerful and regular instruction set.

The machine was not a success, commercially (only 23 were sold), in part because the hardware was unreliable - largely because of one type of large System Module, which contained one bit of the entire ALU section of the CPU - a 'bridge too far' at the then-current state of printed circuit board technology.

According to Tim Anderson, the Project MAC group Dynamic Modeling/Computer Graphics took delivery of the very last PDP-6 from a previous owner. They adopted the AI Lab's ITS operating system, but shortly after moved onto a PDP-10.


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