Clipper architecture
32-bit RISC-like computing architecture
The Clipper architecture is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC)-like central processing unit (CPU) instruction set architecture designed by Fairchild Semiconductor. The architecture had little market success: the only computer manufacturers to create major product lines using Clipper processors were Intergraph and High Level Hardware, although Opus Systems offered a product based on the Clipper as part of its Personal Mainframe range. The first processors using the Clipper architecture were designed and sold by Fairchild, but the division responsible for them was subsequently sold to Intergraph in 1987; Intergraph continued work on Clipper processors for use in its own systems.
The Clipper architecture used a simplified instruction set compared to earlier complex instruction set computer (CISC) architectures, but it did incorporate some more complex instructions than were present in other contemporary RISC processors. These instructions were implemented in a so-called Macro Instruction read-only memory (ROM) within the Clipper CPU. This scheme allowed the Clipper to have somewhat higher code density than other RISC CPUs.
Versions
The initial Clipper microprocessor produced by Fairchild was the C100, which became available in 1986. This was followed by the faster C300 from Intergraph in 1988. The final model of the Clipper was the C400, released in 1990, which was extensively redesigned to be faster and added more floating-point arithmetic registers. The C400 processor combined two key architectural techniques to achieve a new level of performance: superscalar instruction dispatch and superpipelined operation.
While many processors of the time used either superscalar instruction dispatch or superpipelined operation, the Clipper C400 was the first processor to use both.
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This entry incorporates text from “Clipper architecture” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.