March 31st, 2011 ~ by admin

CPU of the Day: MMI 6701 Bit-Slice

In 1974 Monolithic Memories Inc. (MMI) announced the 6701 bit slice device.  At its heart the 6701 is a 4-bit ALU much like the 74181 TTL IC.  The 6701 adds a register, and some other support circuitry on chip making it much more adaptable.  The 6701 has an approximate complexity of 1000 gates (meaning it would replace 1000 gates worth of TTL).  The 6701 was made on a bipolar process and ran at 5.2MHz.  Later versions would up this speed to around 11MHz.

6701D - 1976

The 6701 continues on until around 1980 by which time the AMD 2901 bit-slice processor had come to completely dominate the market.  The Soviets however cloned/modified the 6701 as the 1802VS1 through the 80’s and into the 1990’s.

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CPU of the Day