National Semiconductor SC/MP
one of the first 8 bit microprocessors
National Semiconductor's SC/MP (pronounced scamp) for Simple Cost-effective Micro Processor, is an early 8-bit microprocessor which became available in April 1976. It was designed to allow systems to be implemented with the minimum number of additional support chips. SC/MP included bus-access control signals that allowed several processors to share a common memory bus in a daisy-chained multiprocessor arrangement, or to support direct memory access hardware.
The SC/MP was followed by the SC/MP-II, also known as the INS8060. National Semiconductor later introduced the 70-Series (also known as the INS8070 Series). Some later sources refer to this family as “SC/MP III” or “SC/MP-3”, terminology not used in contemporary National Semiconductor documentation.
The programmer-visible model comprises an 8-bit accumulator, an 8-bit extension register, an 8-bit status register, and four 16-bit pointer registers, one of which is used as the program counter. Memory-reference addressing is page-based, with address arithmetic performed on the low 12 bits of the address.
Designed to be as low-cost as possible, the SC/MP emphasized simple control logic and built-in multiprocessor bus arbitration. It is significantly slower than contemporary designs like the Intel 8080 or MOS 6502.
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