The Evaluation Of The Microprocessor. Essay -- essays research papers

The Evaluation of the Microprocessor. The microprocessor has changed a lot over the years, says (Michael W. Davidson,http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/chipshot.html) Microprocessor technology is progressing so rapidly that even experts in the field are having trouble keeping up with current advances. As more competition develops in this $150 billion a year business, power and speed of the microprocessor is expanding at an almost explosive rate. The changes have been most evident over the last decade. The microprocessor has changed the way computers work by making them faster. The microprocessor is often called the brain of the C.P.U.(or the central processing unit)and without the microprocessor the computer is more or less useless. Motorola and Intel have invented most of the microprocessors over the last decade. Over the years their has been a constant battle over cutting edge technology. In the 80's Motorola won the battle, but now in the 90's it looks as Intel has won the war. The microprocessor 68000 is the original microprocessor(Encarta 95). It was invented by Motorola in the early 80's. The 68000 also had two very distinct qualities like 24-bit physical addressing and a 16-bit data bus. The original Apple Macintosh ,released in 1984, had the 8-MHz found at the core of it. It was also found in the Macintosh Plus, the original Macintosh SE, the Apple Laser-Writer IISC, and the Hewlett-Packard's LaserJet printer family. The 68000 was very efficient for its time for example it could address 16 megabytes of memory, that is 16 more times the memory than the Intel 8088 which was found in the IBM PC. Also the 68000 has a linear addressing architecture which was better than the 8088's segmented memory architecture because it made making large applications more straightforward. The 68020 was invented by Motorola in the mid-80's(Encarta 95). The 68020 is about two times as powerful as the 68000. The 68020 has 32-bit addressing and a 32-bit data bus and is available in various speeds like 16MHz, 20MHz, 25MHz, and 33MHz. The microprocessor 68020 is found in the original Macintosh II and in the LaserWriter IINT both of which are from Apple. The 68030 microprocessor was invented by Motorola about a year after the 68020 was released(Encarta 95). The 68030 has 32-bit addressing and a 32-bit data bus just like it's previous model, but it has paged memory management buil... ... 80-bit floating-point numbers, and 18-digit BCD (binary coded decimal) operands; it coincides to the ANSI/IEEE 754-1985 standard for binary floating-point arithmetic. The 80387SX operates individually on the 80386SX's mode, and it performs as expected regardless of whether the 80386SX is running in real, protected, or virtual 8086 mode. The microprocessor mi486 also called the 80486 or the 486 was invented in 1989 by Intel(Encarta 95). Like its 80386 predecessor, the 486 is a full-bit processor with 32-bit registers, 32-bit data bus, and 32-bit addressing. It includes several enhancements, however, including a built-in cache controller, the built-in equivalent of an 80387 floating-point coprocessor, and provisions for multiprocessing. In addition, the 486 uses a "pipeline" execution scheme that breaks instructions into multiple stages, resulting in much higher performance for many common data and integer math operations. In conclusion it is evident by the following that microprocessors are developing at leaps and bounds and it is not surprising that if by the time it hits the teacher's desk or by the time you read this the next superchip will be developed(Encarta 95).