Design of a Special Purpose Digital Computer Using Standard MOS Circuits

Book excerpt: This report presents the results of using metal-oxide-silicon (MOS) medium scale integration (MSI) circuits in the design, fabrication, and test of a special purpose computer for use as a coordinate converter in a strapdown guidance system. The purpose of the effort was twofold: (1) to implement a strapdown system coordinate converter based on advanced technology that has significant potential for providing future low cost strapdown guidance systems; and (2) to evaluate off-the-shelf MOS integrated circuits to determine their effectiveness in implementing missile computers or small special purpose data processors. MOS/MSI circuitry was selected from off-the-shelf components available from various manufacturers. An overall reduction in number of component packages for MOS was approximately 5 to 1 over a conventional bipolar implementation of the same converter algorithm. Fabrication and test of the converter demonstrated the adequacy of the design and algorithm, and the logic design is considered ready for layout and partitioning with large scale integrated (LSI) circuitry when such a requirement exists. The effort also demonstrated the many inadequacies of off-the-shelf standard-product-line MOS logic circuits for use in designing a computer. Use of such circuits for a complete computer or special purpose processor design is not recommended nor considered practical. (Author).