KA10
From Computer History Wiki
| KA10 | |
| Manufacturer: | Digital Equipment Corporation |
|---|---|
| Architecture: | PDP-10 |
| Year Design Started: | January, 1966 |
| Year First Shipped: | September, 1967 |
| Form Factor: | mainframe |
| Word Size: | 36 bits |
| Logic Type: | silicon transistors and diodes |
| Design Type: | asynchronous with hardware subroutines |
| Clock Speed: | 3 μsec (approximately - different instructions take different amounts of time, the CPU is not synchronous) |
| Memory Speed: | 1.0 μsec (fast), 1.8 μsec (slow) |
| Physical Address Size: | 18 bits (normal), 19/20 (ITS paging box), ?? (TENEX paging box) |
| Virtual Address Size: | 18 bits |
| Memory Management: | dual base and bounds register pairs (non-customized machines) |
| Operating System: | Monitor, ITS |
| Predecessor(s): | PDP-6 |
| Successor(s): | KI10 |
| Price: | US$150K (CPU), US$300-700K (system) |
B-series FLIP CHIP used in the KA10 CPU
The KA10 was the first generation of PDP-10 processors (themselves, exact re-implementations of the earlier PDP-6 architecture). It was built out of discrete transistors, on short single FLIP CHIP cards.
It had hardware support for timesharing (two modes, 'User' and 'Executive'), as well as base and bounds memory management hardware. These were used in the first DECsystem-10 models, running TOPS-10.
It was also the machine on which the ITS and TENEX operating systems were developed, after the machines were modified to provide paging.
