A user-microprogrammable, local host computer with low-level parallelism

Abstract

This paper describes the architecture of a dynamically microprogrammable computer with low-level parallelism, called QA-2, which is designed as a high-performance, local host computer for laboratory use. The architectural principle of the QA-2 is the marriage of high-speed, parallel processing capability offered by four powerful Arithmetic and Logic Units (ALUs) with architectural flexibility provided by large scale, dynamic user-microprogramming. By changing its writable control storage dynamically, the QA-2 can be tailored to a wide spectrum of research-oriented applications covering high-level language processing and real-time processing.