NS32000

1979

This contrasts it with its primary competitor in this space, 1979's Motorola 68000 (68k).

1982

The first member of the family came to market in 1982, briefly known as the 16032 before becoming the 32016.

In contrast, the NS32000 has a 32-bit ALU, so that 16-bit and 32-bit instructions take the same time to complete. The 32016 first shipped in 1982 in a 46-pin DIP package.

Although a 1982 introduction post-dates the 68k by about two years, the 68k was not yet being widely used in the market and the 32016 generated significant interest.

1983

In a report in a June 1983 publication, however, it was remarked that National was "promising production quantities this summer" of 16032 parts, having been "shipping sample quantities for several months", with the floating point co-processor sampling "this month".

By 1984, after two years, the errata list still contained items specifying uncontrollable conditions that would result in the processor coming to a halt, forcing a reset. The original product roadmap envisaged 6 MHz and 10 MHz parts during 1983 and 12 MHz and 14 MHz parts during 1984.

1984

This was project to be released in 1984.

By 1984, after two years, the errata list still contained items specifying uncontrollable conditions that would result in the processor coming to a halt, forcing a reset. The original product roadmap envisaged 6 MHz and 10 MHz parts during 1983 and 12 MHz and 14 MHz parts during 1984.

However, press reports in 1984 indicated difficulties in keeping to this roadmap, with it reportedly having taken five months to increase the frequency of the parts from 6 MHz to 8 MHz, and with representatives estimating a further "two, three or five months" to increase the frequency to 10 MHz.

The Series 32000 has general-purpose registers. ==32032== The 32032 was introduced in 1984.

1985

These problems, and the presence of the similar Motorola 68000 which had been available for some time, led to almost no use in the market. Several improved versions followed, including 1985's 32032 which was essentially a bug-fixed 32016 with an external 32-bit data bus.

An early 1985 article about the 32016-based Whitechapel MG-1 workstation noted that the 32081 memory management unit was "suffering from bugs" and had been situated on its own board providing hardware fixes. National changed its design methodology to make it possible to get the part into production and a design system based on the language "Z" was co-developed with the University of Tel-Aviv, close to the "NSC" design centre in Herzliya, Israel.

1987

The 32532, released in 1987, outperformed the contemporary Motorola 68030 by almost two times, but by this time most interest in microprocessors had turned to RISC platforms and this otherwise excellent design saw almost no use as well. National was working on further improvements in the 32732, but eventually gave up attempting to compete in the central processing unit (CPU) space.

The aggregate performance boost of the NS32332 from these enhancements only made it 50 percent faster than the original NS32032, and therefore less than that of the main competitor, the MC68020. National Semi introduced the NS32532 in early 1987.

1990

This program never came to the market. ==Swordfish== A derivative of the NS32732 called Swordfish was aimed at embedded systems and arrived in about 1990.




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