Information AboutQ32 |
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Memory was addressed by words, which were 48 bits long. Each word was divided into 8 6-bit bytes. A 6-bit byte, as opposed to the 8-bit Byte in common use today, was common in IBM and other scientific computers of the time. The address space provided a maximum of 256K words. The memory bank was oil and water cooled. The ISA was rather complicated for its time. The instructions were a fixed length of one word providing 24 bits for the operation and 24 bits for the address. The address consisted of 18 bits (3 bytes) for the memory address, with other bits used for the specification of index registers and indirect addressing. The operation field provided the operation code and a variety of modifiers. Some modifiers allowed instructions to operate only on specific bytes of a word or on specific bits of a byte without separate masking operations. Other modifiers allowed the single 48-bit ALU to operate on a pair of 24-bit operands to facilitate vector operations. The computers were part of the SAC command and control system. SDC developed the system software using JOVIAL (Jules Own Version of the International Algebraic Language), one of the first high level complied programming languages. |