- Email: [email protected]
The design of a universal microprocessor development system
Wembley Conference Centre,, London, UK. 11-13 March 1981
DISTRIBUTED PROCESSING Microprocessors in a distributed processing network
P M Jackson (Modular BusinessSystems, UK)
The first two days of Microsystems '81 will be devoted to the interests of those professionally involved in the design, development and application of microprocessor-based systems.
KEYNOTE The conference will begin with a keynote speech from Charlie Bass, whose topic will be local area networks. These may be considered as a merger of computer and communications technologies and Dr Bass will discuss the effects of networks on the architecture of distributed processing systems. He sees the likely result as intelligent communications devices which present network capabilities with minimal perturbation to devices connected. Charlie Bass is cofounder and Vice President of Ungermann-Bass, with responsibility for engineering and manufacturing. Before this he was with Zilog since its founding in 1975, leaving the company in 1979 as General Manager of the Systems Division. He designed the Z80 assembler language and conceived the PLZ family.
TECHNICAL SESSIONS The keynote address and first technical session - Distributed processing - will be chaired by Howard Kornstein of Intel. The two following sessions, Development systems and Software, will be chaired by David Dack of Hewlett-Packard. The second day will be more oriented towards applications, with sessions on Project management and Industrial control chaired by Joe Gallacher of Microprocessor Systems Engineering in the morning and on Case studies and Training in the afternoon, chaired by Andrew Colin o f the University o f Strathclyde.
32
With the cost of microprocessor devices becoming proportionately less in the cost of total systems, it is now viable to design systems as a network of functional modules, each containing a microprocessor, interconnected by a simple bus. The paper describes a multimaster network, using a bus arbitrator to resolve bus priorities. The intention of the design is to provide all communication via a single-chip microcomputer. The modules are classedas either slave type or master type. The system is completely general purpose. Peter Jackson is a director of Modular Business Systems, with a degree in electronics. He started work on microprocessor systems in 1972 with Lucas Group Research.Since then he has used microprocessors in control and general purpose computer application. Distributed processing - the role of the intelligent peripheral D Dunlop (Zilog, UK) Distributed processing describes a hardware configuration of similar processing units to allow greater throughput, higher reliability or faster response. However, problems arise because high overheads are created simply through the need for communication between processing units. The paper describes the use of intelligent peripheral controllers, of greater complexity than the old units, to make c o m m u n i c a t i o n between processors easier, saving on time, hardware and software. An approach to special-purpose multimicroprocessor systems I R Whitworth (Royal Military College of
Science, UK)
The low cost of microprocessor hardware allows the system designer to use more than one processor in a system, so as to gain an increase in speed, or to facilitate software design by making each CPU more lightly loaded than a single processor would have been, or to improve system integrity and fault tolerance. There are four main schemes, broadly complementary in their application, and this paper discusses various hardware and software aspects. The schemes are: fully synchronized processors (array or vector processors) ;
asynchronous processors with shared resources; processors asynchronous at instruction level but synchronized at function or process level; and processors which communicate via communications links.
lan Whitworth joined ICI after graduation from the University of Cambridge, and has worked in the fields of chemical plant instrumentation and minicomputer-based process control systems. On leaving ICI in 1975, he moved to the Royal Military College of Science, where he currently holds the post of Principal Lecturer, with interests in microprocessor applications, digital signal processing, and c o m p u t e r networks.
DEVELOPMENT SYSTEMS A low cost selfcontained support system for the Intel 2920 A Karim (Philips Research Laboratories, UK), T Wardle and D J Quarmby
(Loughborough University of Technology, UK) This paper describes the Signalbox support system designed and implemented by the authors in the Electrical Engineering Department of Loughborough University of Technology. It offers an inexpensive system to enable 2920 software to be developed, simulated, debugged and programmed into the device. Signalbox, which is an 8085 system, is programmed in assembler using topdown structured programming. It has 10 kbyte ROM, 3.25 kbyte RAM, 1 serial input and o u t p u t line on RS232C and l l0 parallel l/O lines. It uses a 16 character gas discharge alphanumeric display for messages. The paper concludes by describing some typical 2920 applications to digital filtering and communications. The MAGIC micro development facility R B Vaughn (SPL International Research
Centre, UK) The MAGIC system has been designed to ease the inherent problems in development systems based on 16- and 32-bit microprocessors. Program development is performed on a host minicomputer. Testing and debugging is performed on the target microprocessor-based hardware with the assistance of powerful diagnostic aids running in the host. The system can be expanded to handle more users and/or more target machines, of the same or different types. The paper will show the applications of MAGIC in various areas.
Roy Vaughn is Projects Director of SPL International's Research Centre where he is responsible for several projects including software products support and development. He is one of the main architects of the MAGIC development system. The design of a universal microprocessor
development system E H Bleasdale and K R Green (Bleasdale
Computer Systems, UK} This paper covers the approach Bleasdale adopted in the design and development of the Microprocessor Development
microprocessors and microsystems
System, as yet not publicly announced. Topics discussed will be the objectives of designing a microprocessor development system, i.e. creating a low-cost development system with the capability of supporting 8- and 16-bit microprocessor systems; the software policy, using 8- and 16-bit microprocessor development software; and hardware design, that of selecting a bus, design of the disc controller, interfacing to I/O devices and in-circuit testing. Future developments of the Bleasdale Microprocessor Development System will also be discussed. Eddie Bleasdale has 16 years experience in computers, in lecturing and designing realtime control systems. He formed Bleasdale Computer Systems in 1976 and established a series of indepth microprocessor t[aining courses for microprocessor design engineers. Keith Green has 15 years experience in designing control equipment for process control and electronic equipment for aircraft and is in charge of design and development of Bleasdale Micro Development System (luDS).
SOFTWARE Choosing languages for real-time embedded microprocessor systems R Foulger (National Computing Centre, UK)
The paper explains that the main areas to consider when choosing a high level language for embedded microprocessor systems are: interrupt, capture and handling; subroutine linkage; I/O facilities;program and data structure; timing considerations for time critical code; RAM/RaM requirements;
and the portability of the source code. On this basis, the following languages;PLM, MPL, BASIC, PASCAL, CORAL, RTL/Z and FORTH have been selected and their performance measured against the above criteria. Robin Foulger joined The National Computing Centre after working at ICL, IBM and in further education, to work on the Department of Industries Microprocessor Applications Project (MAP). His current project is on high level languages for embedded microprocessor systems which will be published in summer 1981. Developing FORTRAN program suites for microcomputers C Quer~e (Systematica, UK)
The portability of FORTRAN makes ita popular language, not just for scientific problems, but for all those applications which need to be run on a wide variety of machines. For those engaged in developing and supporting program suites based on FORTRAN the only feature that is clear is that development and support is neither easy nor straightforward. This paper describes the way that a computer company, subsidiary to a major transportation planning practice, went about carrying out the development of its own suite (the TRIPS suite) for use on microcomputers, and how it would recommend such a course of action to others. The paper describes the set of FORTRAN standards that have been adopted and will discuss how this historically came about. The company's conventions are mentioned as these are important to the implementation and maintenance of the suite. Questions of efficiency in a microcomputer environment are also addressed. The paper will then discuss the management of the work including the
PERSONAL C O M P U T I N G Friday 13 March 1981 As usual, the third day of Microsystemswill be devoted to personal computing. The sessionswill be chaired by Julian Allason. 9.00 Trends in microcomputing
2.00
Cornelia Boldyreff, Micro Software Unit, Regional Computer Centre, Bath University, UK 10.00 Microcomputers for the businessman
Mike Hughes, Seismograph Services, IlK
Mike Bawtree, Royal Grammar School, Guildford, UK 2.30
10.30 Questions 10.45 Break 11.15 Scientific and technical use of microcomputers
Mike Fischer, Research Machines Limited. UK
Setting up a school computing department
CP/M is an operating system initially designed for Intel 8080 microprocessor-based computers using standard IBM 8 in floppy discs. First conceived in 1974 to exploit the IBM floppy disc, Gary Kildall, with John Torode developing a controller for the Shugart drive, produced the first version of CP/M on an Intellec-8 computer. CP/M allows applications to ignore hardware. The development of the 'Basic I/O System', separate from the CP/M, allows virtually any machine based on Intel 8080, 8086 or Z-80 to use it. Though originally designed for the single user, CP/M has been extended to provide multiuser and network capability. The paper also describes the four logical subsystems and the various commands of CP/M, and updates the developments in it.
PROJECT M A N A G E M E N T Managing microprocessors - a guide to project management V Tseng (ICL Dataskil, UK)
The paper gives a guide for the use of microprocessors in business management. It discusses the importance of project management, considering the incorporation
R E G I S T R A T I O N FEES 11 & 12 March: £150+ £22.50 VAT includes attendance at the conference coffee, lunch and tea on both days; a copy of the conference proceedings; and entrance to the exhibition 13 March: £10 + £1.50 VAT gives admission to the personal computing conference only
Questions Break
3.45
More imaginative use of microcomputers
Peter Laurie, Editor, Practical Computing, UK
12.15 Questions
4.15
Panel Session
12.30 Lunch
4.45
Close
vol 5no ] jan~feb 1981
The CP/M operating system - the software bus D Powys-Lybbe (MML Ltd, UK)
Diana Laurillard, Institute for Educational Technology, Surrey University, UK 3.15
Speaker to be announced
Christopher Quer~e is Principal Consultant to Systematica, a consultancy specializing in technical applications. Within the company, he is responsible for software development, particularly FORTRAN applications on microcomputers.
Computer aided learning -- a practical proposition
3.00
11.45 Microcomputers and the professions
methods of estimating the times and costs of program conversion and the treatment of documentation and program user manuals.
Full details from: Microsystems '81 Conference Administrator, IPC Conferences Ltd, Room 1317, Surrey House, Throwley Way, Sutton, lSurrey, SMI 4QQ, UK. Tel: 01-643 .8040.
33
DISTRIBUTED PROCESSING Microprocessors in a distributed processing network
P M Jackson (Modular BusinessSystems, UK)
The first two days of Microsystems '81 will be devoted to the interests of those professionally involved in the design, development and application of microprocessor-based systems.
KEYNOTE The conference will begin with a keynote speech from Charlie Bass, whose topic will be local area networks. These may be considered as a merger of computer and communications technologies and Dr Bass will discuss the effects of networks on the architecture of distributed processing systems. He sees the likely result as intelligent communications devices which present network capabilities with minimal perturbation to devices connected. Charlie Bass is cofounder and Vice President of Ungermann-Bass, with responsibility for engineering and manufacturing. Before this he was with Zilog since its founding in 1975, leaving the company in 1979 as General Manager of the Systems Division. He designed the Z80 assembler language and conceived the PLZ family.
TECHNICAL SESSIONS The keynote address and first technical session - Distributed processing - will be chaired by Howard Kornstein of Intel. The two following sessions, Development systems and Software, will be chaired by David Dack of Hewlett-Packard. The second day will be more oriented towards applications, with sessions on Project management and Industrial control chaired by Joe Gallacher of Microprocessor Systems Engineering in the morning and on Case studies and Training in the afternoon, chaired by Andrew Colin o f the University o f Strathclyde.
32
With the cost of microprocessor devices becoming proportionately less in the cost of total systems, it is now viable to design systems as a network of functional modules, each containing a microprocessor, interconnected by a simple bus. The paper describes a multimaster network, using a bus arbitrator to resolve bus priorities. The intention of the design is to provide all communication via a single-chip microcomputer. The modules are classedas either slave type or master type. The system is completely general purpose. Peter Jackson is a director of Modular Business Systems, with a degree in electronics. He started work on microprocessor systems in 1972 with Lucas Group Research.Since then he has used microprocessors in control and general purpose computer application. Distributed processing - the role of the intelligent peripheral D Dunlop (Zilog, UK) Distributed processing describes a hardware configuration of similar processing units to allow greater throughput, higher reliability or faster response. However, problems arise because high overheads are created simply through the need for communication between processing units. The paper describes the use of intelligent peripheral controllers, of greater complexity than the old units, to make c o m m u n i c a t i o n between processors easier, saving on time, hardware and software. An approach to special-purpose multimicroprocessor systems I R Whitworth (Royal Military College of
Science, UK)
The low cost of microprocessor hardware allows the system designer to use more than one processor in a system, so as to gain an increase in speed, or to facilitate software design by making each CPU more lightly loaded than a single processor would have been, or to improve system integrity and fault tolerance. There are four main schemes, broadly complementary in their application, and this paper discusses various hardware and software aspects. The schemes are: fully synchronized processors (array or vector processors) ;
asynchronous processors with shared resources; processors asynchronous at instruction level but synchronized at function or process level; and processors which communicate via communications links.
lan Whitworth joined ICI after graduation from the University of Cambridge, and has worked in the fields of chemical plant instrumentation and minicomputer-based process control systems. On leaving ICI in 1975, he moved to the Royal Military College of Science, where he currently holds the post of Principal Lecturer, with interests in microprocessor applications, digital signal processing, and c o m p u t e r networks.
DEVELOPMENT SYSTEMS A low cost selfcontained support system for the Intel 2920 A Karim (Philips Research Laboratories, UK), T Wardle and D J Quarmby
(Loughborough University of Technology, UK) This paper describes the Signalbox support system designed and implemented by the authors in the Electrical Engineering Department of Loughborough University of Technology. It offers an inexpensive system to enable 2920 software to be developed, simulated, debugged and programmed into the device. Signalbox, which is an 8085 system, is programmed in assembler using topdown structured programming. It has 10 kbyte ROM, 3.25 kbyte RAM, 1 serial input and o u t p u t line on RS232C and l l0 parallel l/O lines. It uses a 16 character gas discharge alphanumeric display for messages. The paper concludes by describing some typical 2920 applications to digital filtering and communications. The MAGIC micro development facility R B Vaughn (SPL International Research
Centre, UK) The MAGIC system has been designed to ease the inherent problems in development systems based on 16- and 32-bit microprocessors. Program development is performed on a host minicomputer. Testing and debugging is performed on the target microprocessor-based hardware with the assistance of powerful diagnostic aids running in the host. The system can be expanded to handle more users and/or more target machines, of the same or different types. The paper will show the applications of MAGIC in various areas.
Roy Vaughn is Projects Director of SPL International's Research Centre where he is responsible for several projects including software products support and development. He is one of the main architects of the MAGIC development system. The design of a universal microprocessor
development system E H Bleasdale and K R Green (Bleasdale
Computer Systems, UK} This paper covers the approach Bleasdale adopted in the design and development of the Microprocessor Development
microprocessors and microsystems
System, as yet not publicly announced. Topics discussed will be the objectives of designing a microprocessor development system, i.e. creating a low-cost development system with the capability of supporting 8- and 16-bit microprocessor systems; the software policy, using 8- and 16-bit microprocessor development software; and hardware design, that of selecting a bus, design of the disc controller, interfacing to I/O devices and in-circuit testing. Future developments of the Bleasdale Microprocessor Development System will also be discussed. Eddie Bleasdale has 16 years experience in computers, in lecturing and designing realtime control systems. He formed Bleasdale Computer Systems in 1976 and established a series of indepth microprocessor t[aining courses for microprocessor design engineers. Keith Green has 15 years experience in designing control equipment for process control and electronic equipment for aircraft and is in charge of design and development of Bleasdale Micro Development System (luDS).
SOFTWARE Choosing languages for real-time embedded microprocessor systems R Foulger (National Computing Centre, UK)
The paper explains that the main areas to consider when choosing a high level language for embedded microprocessor systems are: interrupt, capture and handling; subroutine linkage; I/O facilities;program and data structure; timing considerations for time critical code; RAM/RaM requirements;
and the portability of the source code. On this basis, the following languages;PLM, MPL, BASIC, PASCAL, CORAL, RTL/Z and FORTH have been selected and their performance measured against the above criteria. Robin Foulger joined The National Computing Centre after working at ICL, IBM and in further education, to work on the Department of Industries Microprocessor Applications Project (MAP). His current project is on high level languages for embedded microprocessor systems which will be published in summer 1981. Developing FORTRAN program suites for microcomputers C Quer~e (Systematica, UK)
The portability of FORTRAN makes ita popular language, not just for scientific problems, but for all those applications which need to be run on a wide variety of machines. For those engaged in developing and supporting program suites based on FORTRAN the only feature that is clear is that development and support is neither easy nor straightforward. This paper describes the way that a computer company, subsidiary to a major transportation planning practice, went about carrying out the development of its own suite (the TRIPS suite) for use on microcomputers, and how it would recommend such a course of action to others. The paper describes the set of FORTRAN standards that have been adopted and will discuss how this historically came about. The company's conventions are mentioned as these are important to the implementation and maintenance of the suite. Questions of efficiency in a microcomputer environment are also addressed. The paper will then discuss the management of the work including the
PERSONAL C O M P U T I N G Friday 13 March 1981 As usual, the third day of Microsystemswill be devoted to personal computing. The sessionswill be chaired by Julian Allason. 9.00 Trends in microcomputing
2.00
Cornelia Boldyreff, Micro Software Unit, Regional Computer Centre, Bath University, UK 10.00 Microcomputers for the businessman
Mike Hughes, Seismograph Services, IlK
Mike Bawtree, Royal Grammar School, Guildford, UK 2.30
10.30 Questions 10.45 Break 11.15 Scientific and technical use of microcomputers
Mike Fischer, Research Machines Limited. UK
Setting up a school computing department
CP/M is an operating system initially designed for Intel 8080 microprocessor-based computers using standard IBM 8 in floppy discs. First conceived in 1974 to exploit the IBM floppy disc, Gary Kildall, with John Torode developing a controller for the Shugart drive, produced the first version of CP/M on an Intellec-8 computer. CP/M allows applications to ignore hardware. The development of the 'Basic I/O System', separate from the CP/M, allows virtually any machine based on Intel 8080, 8086 or Z-80 to use it. Though originally designed for the single user, CP/M has been extended to provide multiuser and network capability. The paper also describes the four logical subsystems and the various commands of CP/M, and updates the developments in it.
PROJECT M A N A G E M E N T Managing microprocessors - a guide to project management V Tseng (ICL Dataskil, UK)
The paper gives a guide for the use of microprocessors in business management. It discusses the importance of project management, considering the incorporation
R E G I S T R A T I O N FEES 11 & 12 March: £150+ £22.50 VAT includes attendance at the conference coffee, lunch and tea on both days; a copy of the conference proceedings; and entrance to the exhibition 13 March: £10 + £1.50 VAT gives admission to the personal computing conference only
Questions Break
3.45
More imaginative use of microcomputers
Peter Laurie, Editor, Practical Computing, UK
12.15 Questions
4.15
Panel Session
12.30 Lunch
4.45
Close
vol 5no ] jan~feb 1981
The CP/M operating system - the software bus D Powys-Lybbe (MML Ltd, UK)
Diana Laurillard, Institute for Educational Technology, Surrey University, UK 3.15
Speaker to be announced
Christopher Quer~e is Principal Consultant to Systematica, a consultancy specializing in technical applications. Within the company, he is responsible for software development, particularly FORTRAN applications on microcomputers.
Computer aided learning -- a practical proposition
3.00
11.45 Microcomputers and the professions
methods of estimating the times and costs of program conversion and the treatment of documentation and program user manuals.
Full details from: Microsystems '81 Conference Administrator, IPC Conferences Ltd, Room 1317, Surrey House, Throwley Way, Sutton, lSurrey, SMI 4QQ, UK. Tel: 01-643 .8040.
33