25 Dec
1998
25 Dec
'98
9:40 a.m.
Innfogra(a)aol.com wrote:
The Biin Computer was a joint project of Intel and
Siemens to manufacture a
fault tolerant computer for Online Transaction Processing about 1989. It used
multiple custom processors i860 or i960 based, I'm not sure which.
The Biin was an outgrowth of the Intel "Gemini" project, which itself was
in some sense a followon to the unsuccessful iAPX-432. The Biin processor
had a 33-bit tagged architecture. The i960 was later released as the
32-bit untagged version. Some i960 variants, the MC, MM, and MX, were
eventually offered with the 33rd tag bit present. This was a "marketing
breakthrough"; they extolled the virtues of tag bits to military customers,
but didn't actually offer any software to take advantage of it.
I'm looking for 432 systems, boards, chips, documentation, software, etc.