492 Part 5 The PMS level Section 4 Network computers and computer networks

processor. These are the two increment units, floating add unit, fixed add unit, shift unit, two multiply units, divide unit, boolean unit, and branch nit. In a general way, each of these units is a three address unit. As an example. the floating, add unit obtains two 60-bit operands from the central registers and produces a 60-bit result which is returned to a register. Information to and from these units is held in the central registers, of which there are twenty-four. Eight of these are considered index registers, are of 18 hits length, and one of which always contains zero. Eight are considered address registers, are of 18 bits length, and s rye to address the five read central memory trunks and the two store central memory trunks. Eight are considered floating point registers, are of 60 bits length, and are the only central registers to access central memory during a central program.

In a sense, just as the whole central processor is hidden behind central memory from the peripheral processors, so, too, the ten functional units are hidden behind the central registers from central memory. As a consequence, a considerable instruction efficiency is obtained and an interesting form of concurrency is feasible and practical. The fact that a small number of bits can give meaningful definition to any function makes it possible to develop forms of operand and unit reservations needed for a general scheme of concurrent arithmetic.

Instructions are organized in two formats, a 15-bit format and a 30-bit format, and may be mixed in an instruction word (Fig. 4). As an example, a 15-bit instruction may call for an ADD,

designated by the f and m octal digits, from registers designated by the j and k octal digits, the result going to the register designated by the i octal digit. In this example, the addresses of the three-address, floating add unit are only three bits in length, each address referring to one of the eight floating point registers. The 30-bit format follows this same form but substitutes for the k octal digit an 18-bit constant K which serves as one of the input operands. These two formats provide a highly efficient control of concurrent operations.

As a background, consider the essential difference between a general purpose device and a special device in which high speeds are required. The designer of the special device can generally improve on the traditional general purpose device by introducing some form of concurrency. For example, some activities of a housekeeping nature may be performed separate from the main sequence of operations in separate hardware. The total time to complete a job is then optimized to the main sequence and excludes the housekeeping. The two categories operate concurrently.

It would be, of course, most attractive to provide in a general purpose device some generalized scheme to do the same kind of thing. The organization of the 6600 central processor provides just this kind of scheme. With a multiplicity of functional units, and of operand registers and with a simple and highly efficient addressing system, a generalized queue and reservation scheme is practical. This is called the scoreboard.

The scoreboard maintains a running file of each central register, of each functional unit, and of each of the three operand trunks to and from each unit. Typically, the scoreboard file is made up of two-, three-, and four-bit quantities identifying the nature of register and unit usage. As each new instruction is brought up, the conditions at the instant of issuance are set into the scoreboard. A snapshot is taken, so to speak, of the pertinent conditions. If no waiting is required, the execution of the instruction is begun immediately under control of the unit itself. If waiting is required (for example, an input operand may not yet be available in the central registers), the scoreboard controls the delay, and when released, allows the unit to begin its execution. Most important, this activity is accomplished in the scoreboard and the functional unit, and does not necessarily limit later instructions from being brought up and issued.

In this manner, it is possible to issue a series of instructions, some related, some not, until no functional units are left free or until a specific register is to be assigned more than one result. With just those two restrictions on issuing (unit free and no double result), several independent chains of instructions may proceed concurrently. Instructions may issue every minor cycle in the