ZMOB: A Mob of 256 Cooperative Z80A-Based Microcomputers

摘要

Current directions of computer science and computing in general are toward more parallel machine architectures and distributed models of computing based upon these new architectures. Recently, there has been considerable interest in highly parallel architectures capable of supporting complex distributed computation via a large number of autonomous processors. ZMOB is such a machine, currently under design and simulation. Architecturally, ZMOB is a collection of 256 identical but autonomous Z80A-based microcomputers (processors). Each processor comprises 32K bytes of 375 ns read/write central memory (expandable to 48K bytes), up to 4K bytes of resident operating system on 450ns EPROM, an 8-bit hardware multiplier, and interface logic for communications functions.