Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > alt.sys.pdp10 > #8337

Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement

Cross-posted to 2 groups.

Show all headers | View raw

Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> writes:

> "Stephen M. Jones" <smj@twenex.org> writes:

>> I have invested in a TOAD-2 machine running the PDP-10 architecture, and
>> would like to make its capabilities available.  The TOAD is manufactured by
>> XKL LLC, and is a completely new hardware implementation of Digital's 36-bit
>> PDP-10 architecture, not an emulator running on another platform.  This
>> machine I've purchased will be a repository for PDP10 public domain
>> software...

> This is cool, thanks for doing it, and I didn't realize that the Toad-2
> existed.  Finding much info about it is non-trivial.  Is it really built
> around an ASIC?  Or maybe an FPGA, that would be easier?  When was it built?
> Was there really much benefit by then of building a hardware implementation
> instead of simply running an emulator?  I've been slightly interested in
> fooling with emulated PDP-10's for various purposes, but have never
> understood the attraction of hardware reimplementations once emulators became
> a lot faster than historical 10's.

Hmm.  Start with searches in these newsgroups from the 1990s, when I was (among
other things) running sales support and customer support for XKL.  Look for
posts from "alderson@xkl.com".

Note, please, that I have not been an employee of XKL since 2003, and do not
now speak for them in any way, official or un-.

XKL was started by Len Bosack, co-founder of cisco Systems (original spelling),
to build what was originally intended to be cisco's premier product, a desktop
PDP-10 clone which implemented things like the full 30 bit address space in
hardware.  The result was the introduction, in 1995, of the XKL Toad-1 System,
an extended clone the size of a two drawer file cabinet.

The Toad-1 featured a processor roughly 2x faster than the KL-10, a 4-port
10baseT Ethernet interface, a 4-port FASTWIDE SCSI-2 interface, and a 32MW
memory card, in a 7 slot backplane.  One of the tests we performed was to put 4
memory cards in, to see if our mods to TOPS-20 were correct; the system sat
there happily using 128MW and never even hiccoughed.  We sold a few systems, to
MCI, Digital, and Paul Allen (as an individual, not to one of his companies);
others were gifts to friends of the company.

The XKL-1 processor board was built around an FPGA from Xilinx.

The TOAD-2 processor is a reimplementation of the Toad-1 in a single FPGA.  The
primary file systems are on 2 microSD cards; the Ethernet is built in, and they
provide a NAS application which runs on Linux to allow for much more than 2GB
of user storage.  The early version, which we had at Living Computers: Museum +
Labs, was labeled "TOAD-2"; the current version is embedded in their DarkStar
optical router boxes.  The TOAD-2 is used as the configuration driver in their
40G/100G and faster optical networking products (where routing is done in the
fiber header, not a general purpose processor); if no networking interfaces are
detected, the system will assume that it should boot TOPS-20 instead.

They are still using (bigger, faster) FPGAs in their designs.  Len has always
held that smart engineers can get the speeds they want from better designs,
instead of wasting time on ASICs which will have to be competely replaced
instead of being modified if a bug, or an enhancement, needs to be updated.

At the time we build the Toad-1 (on which I did some of the operating system
work as well as my other duties), PC clocks had not reached the 1GHz range yet,
and it was a perfectly reasonable product line, given that PDP-10 users had at
least 20 years invested in local software (like most mainframe shops, primary
software loads were local).  We even ported Tops-10 to the Toad-1 for a
potential customer; no one apparently has asked for Tops-10 for the TOAD-2.

-- 
Rich Alderson					  news@alderson.users.panix.com
      Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
	  omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
									--Galen

Back to alt.sys.pdp10 | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement "Stephen M. Jones" <smj@twenex.org> - 2021-09-24 04:55 +0000
  Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> - 2021-09-24 11:01 +0000
    Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2021-09-25 01:18 -0700
      Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> - 2021-09-25 13:09 +0000
  Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2021-09-24 16:30 -0700
    Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> - 2021-09-24 21:15 -0400
      Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2021-09-27 00:11 -0700
        Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> - 2021-09-27 17:45 -0400
          Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2021-09-27 18:22 -0700
            Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> - 2021-09-28 20:22 -0400
              Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2021-09-28 18:15 -0700
    Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> - 2021-09-25 06:53 +0000
      Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2021-09-25 01:01 -0700
  Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2021-09-25 01:17 -0700
    Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> - 2021-09-25 20:54 -0400
      Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2021-09-26 23:41 -0700
      Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2021-09-26 23:44 -0700
      Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2021-09-29 00:48 -0700
        Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2021-09-29 05:02 -0700
          Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement "lordha...@gmail.com" <lordhailsham@gmail.com> - 2021-09-29 06:51 -0700
            Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2021-09-29 12:05 -0700
              Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement "lordha...@gmail.com" <lordhailsham@gmail.com> - 2021-09-29 16:14 -0700
                Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2021-09-29 18:15 -0700
                Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> - 2021-09-30 07:07 +0000
                Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> - 2021-09-30 07:30 +0000
            Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2021-09-29 21:11 +0000
  Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement drb@ihatespam.msu.edu (Dennis Boone) - 2021-09-26 10:00 -0500
  Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement Charles Richmond <codescott@aquaporin4.com> - 2021-10-06 15:10 -0500

csiph-web