PDP-8

The PDP-8 was the first successful commercial minicomputer, produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the 1960s. It was the first widely-sold computer in the DEC PDP series of computers (the PDP-5 was not originally intended to be a general-purpose computer).

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The PDP-8 was a 12-bit computer. In its basic configuration it had a main memory of 4,096 twelve-bit words (that is, 4K words, equivalent to 6 kilobytes), expandable to 32,768 words (32K words / 48 KB). At its inception, the PDP-8 had only eight instructions and two registers (a 12-bit accumulator, AC, and a single-bit "link register", L). The machine used a magnetic core memory system that operated at a cycle time of 1.5 microseconds, so that a typical two-cycle (Fetch, Execute) memory-reference instruction ran at a speed of 0.333 MIPS. Later machines added a second register (the "MQ" Multiplier/Quotient Register), actual multiply and divide instruction options, and faster operation.

Minicomputer: Minicomputer is a largely obsolete term for a class of multi-user computers which make up the middle range of the computing spectrum, in between the largest multi-user systems (mainframe computers) and the smallest single-user systems (microcomputers or personal computers). More modern terms for suc...

1960s: The 1960s, or The Sexy Sixties, in its most obvious sense refers to the decade between 1960 and 1969, but the expression has taken on a wider meaning over the past twenty years. The Sixties has come to refer to the complex of inter-related cultural and political events which occurred in approximatel...

PDP: PDP is also used as an acronym for Plasma Display Panel and Parallel Distributed Processing....