MCP-1600


MCP-1600

A processor made by Western Digital, consisting of at leastfour separate integrated circuits, including the controlcircuitry unit, the ALU, two or four ROM chips withmicrocode, and timing circuitry.

The ALU chip contained twenty-six 8-bit registers and an8-bit ALU, while the control unit supervised the moving ofdata, memory access, and other control functions. The ROMallowed the chip to function as either an 8- or 16-bit chip,with clever use of the 8-bit ALU. Further, microcodeallowed the addition of floating-point routines (40 + 8 bitformat), simplifying programming (and possibly producing afloating-point coprocessor).

Two standard microcode ROMs were available. Thisflexibility was one reason it was also used to implement theDEC LSI-11 processor as well as the WD Pascal Microengine.