Concept

Data General Nova

Résumé

The Data General Nova is a series of 16-bit minicomputers released by the American company Data General. The Nova family was very popular in the 1970s and ultimately sold tens of thousands of units. The first model, known simply as "Nova", was released in 1969. The Nova was packaged into a single 3U rack-mount case and had enough computing power to handle most simple tasks. The Nova became popular in science laboratories around the world. It was followed the next year by the SuperNOVA, which ran roughly four times as fast. Introduced during a period of rapid progress in integrated circuit (or "microchip") design, the line went through several upgrades over the next five years, introducing the 800 and 1200, the Nova 2, Nova 3, and ultimately the Nova 4. A single-chip implementation was also introduced as the microNOVA in 1977, but did not see widespread use as the market moved to new microprocessor designs. Fairchild Semiconductor also introduced a microprocessor version of the Nova in 1977, the Fairchild 9440, but it also saw limited use in the market. The Nova line was succeeded by the Data General Eclipse, which was similar in most ways but added virtual memory support and other features required by modern operating systems. A 32-bit upgrade of the Eclipse resulted in the Eclipse MV series of the 1980s. Edson de Castro was the Product Manager of the pioneering Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-8, a 12-bit computer widely referred to as the first true minicomputer. He also led the design of the upgraded PDP-8/I, which used early integrated circuits in place of individual transistors. During the PDP-8/I process, de Castro had been visiting circuit board manufacturers who were making rapid advances in the complexity of the boards they could assemble. de Castro concluded that the 8/I could be produced using fully automated assembly on large boards, which would have been impossible only a year earlier. Others within DEC had become used to the smaller boards used in earlier machines and were concerned about tracking down problems when there were many components on a single board.

Source officielle

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General_Nova

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