Microprogrammed adaptive routing controller
Abstract
The Microprogrammed Adaptive Routing Controller (MARC) is a 16 bit spacecraft minicomputer. The CPU contains four AMD 2901 bit - slice chips. The MARC was built as a controller for the communications payload of a communications satellite with about 100 communications channels. Each of the channels has very flexible control including variable data rate, Doppler offset, and flexible routing. The MARC can be operated in the microprogrammed mode for fast simple jobs or the programmed mode for more complicated tasks or a combination of the two modes. Input/output is either programmed or microprogrammed. Microprogrammed I/O is very similar to DMA in performance but requires less hardware. The MARC has 15 vectored interrupts which can be used for either programmed or microprogrammed I/O. The MARC instruction set approximately envelopes the PDP 11-34 and Nova 3 instructions sets with approximately the same computing speed.
- Publication:
-
Challenge of the 1980s; Proceedings of the Third Digital Avionics Systems Conference
- Pub Date:
- 1979
- Bibcode:
- 1979tdas.conf...85R
- Keywords:
-
- Adaptive Control;
- Airborne/Spaceborne Computers;
- Architecture (Computers);
- Communication Satellites;
- Controllers;
- Microprogramming;
- Multichannel Communication;
- Assembler Routines;
- Information Flow;
- Input/Output Routines;
- Minicomputers;
- Registers (Computers);
- Spacecraft Instrumentation