Chapter 44 The structure of SYSTEM/360 603

SYSTEM/360 has three families of logic circuits, as shown in Table 2, each using the same solid-logic technology. One family, having a nominal delay of 30 nsec per logical stage or level, is used in the data paths of Models 30,40, and 50. A second and faster family with a nominal delay of 10 nsec per level is used in Models 60 and 62. The fastest family, with a delay of 6 nsec, is used in Model 70.

The fundamental determinant of CPU speed is the time required to take data from the internal registers, process the data through the adder or other logical unit, and return the result to a register. This cycle time is determined by the delay per logical circuit level and the number of levels in the register-to-adder path, the adder, and the adder-to-register return path. The number of levels varies because of the trade-off that can usually be made between the number of circuit modules and the number of logical levels. Thus, the cycle time of the system varies from 1.0 m sec for Model 30 (with 30-nsec circuits, a relatively small number of modules, and more logic levels) and 0.5 m sec for Model 50 (also with 30-nsec circuits, but with more modules and fewer levels) to 0.2 m sec for Model 70 (with 6-nsec circuits).

The speed of the CPU depends also on the speed of the general and floating-point registers. In Model 30, these registers are located in an extension to the main core storage and have a read-write