intel 80960: anyone?

[DiTBho]

just out of curiosity, has anyone here ever worked with i960?

it's strange that Intel has come up with such a smart and elegant design, but it's is very friendly and powerful!

Unfortunately it's not popular, there are no toolchains around, except the ones from Green Hills I have at work (node-locked to my workstation), so for my hobby SBC I ended up hacking an old gcc toolchain, patching it and recompiling it from scratch, with a minimal gdb-stub as "poor man debugger" 

[Ed.Kloonk]

Not familiar with it. What was/is the target market?

[Kleinstein]

I have seen an i960 in an old fax machine. I think it is no longer that attractive.

[DiTBho]

Not familiar with it. What was/is the target market?

i960 is 0xdeadbeaf since the early 2000s.

often used in
- hw-RAID5-capable standalone and protected fault-tolerant SCSI storage system
- Fast Fibre Channel HSx-series
- Fast Fibre Channel switches
- Sega's Model2 arcade boards
- MTC tactical aircraft's MMR, multi-mode radar engines
- MTC tactical submarines's MMS multi-mode sonar engines
- automatic plotting interfacing boards for radars and sonars
- HP X11-Terminals.
- ADSL broadband modem
- slot machines

[Ed.Kloonk]

Not familiar with it. What was/is the target market?

i960 is 0xdeadbeaf since the early 2000s.

often used in
- hw-RAID5-capable standalone and protected fault-tolerant SCSI storage system
- Fast Fibre Channel HSx-series
- Fast Fibre Channel switches
- Sega's Model2 arcade boards
- MTC tactical aircraft's MMR, multi-mode radar engines
- MTC tactical submarines's MMS multi-mode sonar engines
- automatic plotting interfacing boards for radars and sonars
- HP X11-Terminals.
- ADSL broadband modem
- slot machines

Ah. Given that vintage, what you've got to realize it around that time, (your favourite!) x86 was utilized extensively with Windoze garbage and that marriage abomination manifested into ATMs and POSs, airport terminals etc. Security nightmare.

Seems to me that intel missed the mark by resting on their laurels from the '70s and '80s and expecting the industry to fill in the OS gap of their new chip. It's no wonder designers looked elsewhere.

[DiTBho]

I have seen an i960 in an old fax machine. I think it is no longer that attractive.

For me, it looks like Motorola 88k: a rare, powerful and elegant beast of the past, that for some reason didn't get popular despite it deserved to have better fate and had all the potential to rule the world.

I am going to resurrect a software simulator from the old GNU/gdb package.

[Ed.Kloonk]

This bit..

- hw-RAID5-capable standalone and protected fault-tolerant SCSI storage system

...got my attention. Did a quick search and it seems that the king of SCSI in those days (Adaptec) had only one, that I can find, SCSI card that rocked the i960. (PM1554U2 decade)

Now, why do you suppose the king of SCSI and the king of the CPU couldn't get into bed?

[DiTBho]

(your favourite!) x86 was utilized extensively with Windoze garbage and that marriage abomination manifested into ATMs and POSs, airport terminals etc. Security nightmare.

yup, from 1997 to today I have collected something like ~300 photos of airport, railway, underground (even in the UK), or ship information terminals, showing a genuine Windows crash.

I've seen tactical engines filled with bullet holes in their structures causing the CBIT (continuous bit testing, kind of low level perpetual diagnistic) to report the catastropic diagnostic "main system failure, 10% operation", then hardware 90% destroyed, yet the Voter disconneted the damaged board, and the emergency software running on the reduncancy subsystem still able to bring back both the black box and the rest.

on x86 ... it's a serious problem to run this

Code: [Select]

        mov   eax,cr0           ; get CPU control register
                                ; 286 will resume execution @ 0xF000:FFF0
                                ; 386 will fall through.
        lidt  [reset_IDTR]
                                ; restore real-mode compatible value
                                ;   * * * mandatory * * *
                                ;   real-mode interrupts are relocatable
                                ;   on the 386 via the IDT register!
        and     eax,0xfffffffe  ; clear protected mode bit
        mov     cr0,eax         ; now, the cpu is out of protected-mode
;----------------------------------------------------------------------------

as it causes a triple-fault, and it may fail, resulting a system that no more powerup. Yup, you can add a WDT ... but it's not a smart idea for the Voter because if the CPUs don't respond to the CBIT you might trick the Voter into thinking that the CPUs are damaged.

so, it's why x86 is no good for for MTC stuff, while PowerPC is the preferred choice.

Of both m88k and i960 I have seen mission tactical computer MTCs (military stuff) for tactical with two CPUs connected to an "intrinsically safe" Voter-circuit. I saw  despite both the hardware and software complexity is high, it looked simpler than other modern approaches, even simpler and more fault-tollerant than tri-cores all-in-one solutions.

Really impressed 

[DiTBho]

Now, why do you suppose the king of SCSI and the king of the CPU couldn't get into bed?

too small bed  for both

[Ed.Kloonk]

Now, why do you suppose the king of SCSI and the king of the CPU couldn't get into bed?

too small bed  for both

Ha.

I was thinking who was gonna play daddy. But yeah. 

[Retep]

Not familiar with it. What was/is the target market?

Ken Shirriff wrote an article about it:
http://www.righto.com/2023/07/the-complex-history-of-intel-i960-risc.html

[rsjsouza]

This bit..

- hw-RAID5-capable standalone and protected fault-tolerant SCSI storage system

...got my attention. Did a quick search and it seems that the king of SCSI in those days (Adaptec) had only one, that I can find, SCSI card that rocked the i960. (PM1554U2 decade)

Now, why do you suppose the king of SCSI and the king of the CPU couldn't get into bed?

Back in these days the i960 was present in some of the beefier motherboard models from some reputable manufacturers (Supermicro, Tyan are the ones I recall) that had Hardware RAID and SCSI. I don't recall if others had them, though.

A multitude of Adaptec boards at that time had their own stamped ICs, which might have been either a full in-house ASIC design or a ROM-coded microcontroller from someone else.

I happen to have a pair of newer SAS RAID cards that have a beautiful i960 on each. Quite interesting devices that succumbed to ARM. 

[DiTBho]

Ken Shirriff wrote an http://www.righto.com/2023/07/the-complex-history-of-intel-i960-risc.html
]article[/url] about it

very accurate, expecially the { KA (Core), KB (Numerics), MC (Protected), XA (Extended) } note!

I am working with a "960CA evaluation board" at home, but I have a XA equipment at work, and thank goodness I also have all the paper documentation as it's very hard to find all the documentation about XA.

my books come from an original intel dev kit box buried two in a room two floors underground, literally from a 10 year old semi-abandoned underground warehouse that looks like a bunker from Resident Evil for the weird elevator you have to use to access it.
 

Look how "brilliant" (sarc) the magazines can be:

By the late 1990s, the i960 was described with terms such as "aging", "venerable", and "medieval".

In 1999, Microprocessor Report described the situation: "The i960 survived on cast-off semiconductor processes two to three generations old; the i960CA is still built in a 1.0-micron process (perhaps by little old ladies with X-Acto knives)."

perhaps those columnists have medieval minds 

[DiTBho]

being a "computerarchaeologist" with a pride badge pinned to my shirt, I just bought ~50Kg! of paper!!!

Four boxes full of books, to be loaded in the luggage of the car 

Full set of manuals!!! Everything ever printed about i960, i960 debuggers, every intel i960 eval boards ever made and two copies/revisions of the BiiN CPU Architecture Reference Manual.

Next Tuesday, I am going to drive for 500+500Km, round trip, to collect the precious cargo in person.

This stuff deserves a dedicated space in my bookshelf, so... on my way home, I'll stop by Ikea to buy a couple new sets of new shelves!

[iMo]

..

By the late 1990s, the i960 was described with terms such as "aging", "venerable", and "medieval".

In 1999, Microprocessor Report described the situation: "The i960 survived on cast-off semiconductor processes two to three generations old; the i960CA is still built in a 1.0-micron process (perhaps by little old ladies with X-Acto knives)."

perhaps those columnists have medieval minds 

While staring at the die shots of all those great chips from 70/80/90ties I wonder how they did it at that time, without all those technology we have here today. Imagine the task - "Do create the i960 with help of a pdp-11 or Vax11/780".. 

[PCB.Wiz]

being a "computerarchaeologist" with a pride badge pinned to my shirt, I just bought ~50Kg! of paper!!!

Four boxes full of books, to be loaded in the luggage of the car 
Full set of manuals!!! Everything ever printed about i960, i960 debuggers, every intel i960 eval boards ever made and two copies/revisions of the BiiN CPU Architecture Reference Manual.
Next Tuesday, I am going to drive for 500+500Km, round trip, to collect the precious cargo in person.
This stuff deserves a dedicated space in my bookshelf, so... on my way home, I'll stop by Ikea to buy a couple new sets of new shelves!

Wow, now that is dedication to History ! 

[rhb]

just out of curiosity, has anyone here ever worked with i960?

it's strange that Intel has come up with such a smart and elegant design, but it's is very friendly and powerful!

Unfortunately it's not popular, there are no toolchains around, except the ones from Green Hills I have at work (node-locked to my workstation), so for my hobby SBC I ended up hacking an old gcc toolchain, patching it and recompiling it from scratch, with a minimal gdb-stub as "poor man debugger" 

OMG!  The horror of it all.  I narrowly escaped the Intel i860 Hypercube.  My job was to program it.  It was replacing the i386 Hypercube I was working on.
d
I bought and read the processor manual and quickly figure out itcould *never* get even 10% of the claimed computer performance because there wasn't BW to memory available to feed it.  So for seismic it was utterly useless.

After the i860 was operational, we gathered in my boss's office and watched the Intel rep compile a program with the comment, "And this is how you dump the assembly so you can hand optimize it."  I was utterly aghast. The C language program ran at about 3-4 MFLOPs.  It was touted as being able to do 80 MFLOPs.   I already knew the OS was rather weak to be kind.  So when this new guy wanted my job I was delighted to let him have it.

Intel only paid Green Hills for the most basic compiler.  Green Hills was exceedingly unhappy when they discovered Intel didn't have any secret optimization sauce.

The i860 was a graphics engine designed by an Israeli firm Intel bought IIRC.  I'm sure about the Israeli part but not how they acquired the IP.  A friend of mine made a good living for 3-4 years selling hand optimized FFTs to the unwitting buyers of the i860.

I have no idea how the i860 and i960 are related.  Was the i960 an i860 with more memory BW?

Have Fun!
Reg

[tggzzz]

just out of curiosity, has anyone here ever worked with i960?

it's strange that Intel has come up with such a smart and elegant design, but it's is very friendly and powerful!

Unfortunately it's not popular, there are no toolchains around, except the ones from Green Hills I have at work (node-locked to my workstation), so for my hobby SBC I ended up hacking an old gcc toolchain, patching it and recompiling it from scratch, with a minimal gdb-stub as "poor man debugger" 

OMG!  The horror of it all.  I narrowly escaped the Intel i860 Hypercube.  My job was to program it.  It was replacing the i386 Hypercube I was working on.
d
I bought and read the processor manual and quickly figure out itcould *never* get even 10% of the claimed computer performance because there wasn't BW to memory available to feed it.  So for seismic it was utterly useless.

After the i860 was operational, we gathered in my boss's office and watched the Intel rep compile a program with the comment, "And this is how you dump the assembly so you can hand optimize it."  I was utterly aghast. The C language program ran at about 3-4 MFLOPs.  It was touted as being able to do 80 MFLOPs.   I already knew the OS was rather weak to be kind.  So when this new guy wanted my job I was delighted to let him have it.

Intel only paid Green Hills for the most basic compiler.  Green Hills was exceedingly unhappy when they discovered Intel didn't have any secret optimization sauce.

The i860 was a graphics engine designed by an Israeli firm Intel bought IIRC.  I'm sure about the Israeli part but not how they acquired the IP.  A friend of mine made a good living for 3-4 years selling hand optimized FFTs to the unwitting buyers of the i860.

I have no idea how the i860 and i960 are related.  Was the i960 an i860 with more memory BW?

Have Fun!
Reg

The i860 was infamously the subject of many academic studies to see whether they could make something useful with it. The couldn't.

The i960 was widely used in embedded and/or single-purpose systems.

The only relationship was that they were roughly contemporaneous.

[DiTBho]

I have no idea how the i860 and i960 are related.  Was the i960 an i860 with more memory BW?

Similar CPU name, i${x}60, but the Intel i860 processor is completely unrelated to the i960 

The i860 was RISC but also VLIW-ish depending on how you look at it, so a kind of bizarre cousin that achieved its best commercial success as part of the SGI's RealityEngine, which used a number of i860XP processors in large geometry engineas, but it was very difficult to get high performance as it required the compilers to order instructions carefully in the object code to keep the pipelines filled, that was the VLIW-ish part, and since compilers were not so smart ... it meant humans had to manually order instructions carefully in the object code to keep the pipelines filled!

Feasable, but .. more expensive than programming a general purpose CPU, so when Pentium CPUs and PowerPC appeared as cheap "general purpose" CPUs able to provide similar/equal performance, it the was the end of i860.

The i960 is definitively RISC, even the superscalar version has no VLIW-ish syndrome.
The i960-extented is RISC with microcode: better and simpler than i860 and unique for a RISC, especially if compared to a pure RISC design like MIPS R2K, for which a "micro sequencer" would be a banned by design blasphemy.

Anyway, I'm fine with i960CA, working well with no issue of any sort (and less than with x86, anyway), and the Green Hills compilers I got at work are more than fine!

[greghol]

I have a bunch of 80960SB-16 84 pin PLCC parts and a paper book i960 SA/SB Reference Manual. This one is a low end entry model and it runs at 5V 16 MHz. The SB has the floating point unit and on the SA it is omitted. I have been scouring the internet on SW and HW info.

The following github user has a bunch of tools and HW info that looks interesting. https://github.com/DrItanium
i960-CTOOLS: https://github.com/biggestsonicfan/i960-CTOOLS-with-NINDY/blob/master/w95-ctools/bin/gas960.exe

Greg

[DiTBho]

I have a bunch of 80960SB-16 84 pin PLCC parts and a paper book i960 SA/SB Reference Manual. This one is a low end entry model and it runs at 5V 16 MHz. The SB has the floating point unit and on the SA it is omitted. I have been scouring the internet on SW and HW info.

nice 

I have recently resurrected an old version of binutils and gcc, cc1 generates "decent" assembly for i960.
At work I can use GreenHills C/89 and Ada by. The cc1 generates better assembly code but the whole toolchain is nodelocked to a SunOS/Sparc workstation.

[coppice]

The i860 was a graphics engine designed by an Israeli firm Intel bought IIRC.

We couldn't figure out what Intel intended with the i860 when it came out. They certainly didn't push graphics as a core application. It was sort of marketed like it was intended to be used in arrays, rather like the transputer, yet seemed to have no hardware support to make the kind of high speed comms network an array needs. If could rip through some very regular maths, like matrix maths, but struggled with most other things. It drew us in with apparent potential, and then drove us away.

The two areas I know of it being used were in some US military DSP applications, and a generation of Stratus Computers fault tolerant servers. Stratus must have kicked themselves for going in that direction.

[greghol]

Interesting support chips but I will be using a medium sized 5V CPLD with some flash and RAM (512Kx8). Either Altera or Xilinx.

Greg