IBM has found that robust product line architecture has allowed it to more rapidly leverage its technologies in microprocessors,
microcode and operating systems to new market applications.
The unique and significant contribution of the CPUSIM simulator presented in this paper is the visualization of the underlying
microcode executed for each instruction.
As a contingency plan for Host micro-code purposes, the verification team initiated, developed, and tested a rollback strategy and found the setback tests indicated that the logic built into the
microcode contain no year-specific processing checks.
"With features such as ATM traffic management being provisioned in the device
microcode, enhancing scheduling algorithms, queuing methods or adding service classes is a simple matter of downloading new code into ASPEN.
Conner's small, lightweight drive architecture was much more rugged than its 5.25-inch ancestors; it handled functions electronically that had previously been managed with mechanical parts and used
microcode to replace functions that previously had been addressed electronically.
Alsing, the group's
microcode expert, was as warm and approachable as Tom West was cold and remote.
Within the computer there are a number of layers of software, all working in unison to produce the result desired by the user.(10) At the top of this figurative hierarchy are the application programs ("applications")--the software that describes the precise task that the user wants to accomplish.(11) Beneath the applications is the operating system, which coordinates the running of the applications, handles the complex task of storing and retrieving information, and performs many of the standard functions needed by the application.(12) At the bottom of the pile is the
microcode, which takes machine language instructions and converts them to the series of physical signals necessary to control the circuits of the computer.(13)
The i486 microprocessor's improved
microcode, integrated circuitry, and integrated 8K cache and cache controller offer dramatic improvements over i386 computing.
Even the
microcode in a ROM that embodies the entire inventive notion of a new tachometer is patentable.
Central to the operation of these and successive members of this family was a
microcode program stored in the processor's read-only memory (ROM).