The
PERQ, also referred to as the
Three Rivers PERQ or
ICL PERQ, was a pioneering
workstationA workstation is a high-end microcomputer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems...
computerA computer is a machine that manipulates data according to a set of instructions.Although mechanical examples of computers have existed through much of recorded human history, the first electronic computers were developed in the mid-20th century . These were the size of a large room, consuming as...
produced in the early 1980s.
The workstation was conceived by five former
Carnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Since its inception, Carnegie Mellon has grown into a world-renowned institution, with numerous programs that are frequently ranked among the best in the world...
alumni and employees who formed the startup
Three Rivers Computer CorporationThe Three Rivers Computer Corporation was a spinoff of the Computer Science department at Carnegie-Mellon University, founded in 1974. The company was located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. The company's principal products were a line of workstation computers called PERQ, launched in 1979...
(3RCC) in 1974. One of the founders, Brian Rosen, also worked at
Xerox PARCPARC , formerly Xerox PARC, is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California with a distinguished reputation for its contributions to information technology....
on the Dolphin workstation. The PERQ design was influenced by the original workstation computer, the
Xerox AltoThe Xerox Alto was an early personal computer developed at Xerox PARC in 1973. It was the first computer to use the desktop metaphor and graphical user interface ....
. It was the first commercially-produced personal workstation, a prototype PERQ being shown at the 1979
SIGGRAPHSIGGRAPH is the name of the annual conference on computer graphics convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization. The first SIGGRAPH conference was in 1974. The conference is attended by tens of thousands of computer professionals...
conference. The origin of the name "PERQ" is from the word
perquisite.
As a result of interest from the
UKThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
Science Research Council (later, the Science and Engineering Research Council), 3RCC entered into a relationship with the British computer company ICL in 1981 for European distribution, and later co-development and manufacturing. The PERQ was used in a number of academic research projects in the UK during the 1980s.
3RCC was renamed PERQ System Corporation in 1984. It went out of business in 1986, largely due to competition from other workstation manufacturers such as
Sun MicrosystemsSun Microsystems, Inc. is a multinational vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services, founded on February 24, 1982...
,
Apollo ComputerApollo Computer, Inc., founded 1980 in Chelmsford, Massachusetts by William Poduska , developed and produced Apollo/Domain workstations in the 1980s...
and
Silicon GraphicsSilicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark and Abbey Silverstone...
.
Processor
The PERQ
CPUThe Central Processing Unit or processor is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, and is the primary element carrying out the computer's functions. This term has been in use in the computer industry at least since the early 1960s...
was a
microcodeMicrocode is a layer of hardware-level instructions and/or data structures involved in the implementation of higher level machine code instructions in many computers and other processors; it resides in a special high-speed memory and translates machine instructions into sequences of detailed...
d
discrete logicTransistor–transistor logic is a class of digital circuits built from bipolar junction transistors and resistors. It is called transistor–transistor logic because both the logic gating function and the amplifying function are performed by transistors .TTL is notable for being a widespread...
design, rather than a
microprocessorA microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a central processing unit on a single integrated circuit . The first microprocessors emerged in the early 1970s and were used for electronic calculators, using binary-coded decimal arithmetic on 4-bit words...
. It was based around 74S181 bit-slice
ALUIn computing, an arithmetic logic unit is a digital circuit that performs arithmetic and logical operations. The ALU is a fundamental building block of the central processing unit of a computer, and even the simplest microprocessors contain one for purposes such as maintaining timers...
s and an
Am2910Am2900 is a family of integrated circuits created in 1975 by Advanced Micro Devices . They were constructed with bipolar devices, in a bit-slice topology, and were designed to be used as modular components each representing a different aspect of a computer control unit...
microcode sequencer. The PERQ CPU was unusual in having 20-bit wide registers and a writable
control storeA control store is the part of a CPUs control unit that stores the CPU's microprogram. It is usually accessed by a microsequencer.A control store is usually implemented as a diode-array of read-only memory. This tradition dates back to the program timing matrix on the MIT Whirlwind, first...
(WCS), allowing the microcode to be redefined. The CPU had a microinstruction cycle period of 170 ns (5.88 MHz).
PERQ 1
The original PERQ (also known as the
PERQ 1), launched in 1980, was housed in a pedestal-type cabinet with a brown fascia and an 8-inch floppy disk drive mounted horizontally at the top.
The PERQ 1 CPU had a WCS comprising 4k words of 48-bit microcode memory. The later
PERQ 1A CPU extended the WCS to 16k words. The PERQ 1 could be configured with 256 kB, 1MB or 2 MB of 64-bit-wide RAM (accessed via a 16-bit bus), a 12 or 24 MB, 14-inch
ShugartShugart Associates was a computer peripheral manufacturer that dominated the floppy disk drive market in the late 1970s and is famous for introducing the minifloppy disk drive....
SA-4000-series
hard diskA hard disk drive is a non-volatile storage device that stores digitally encoded data on rapidly rotating platters with magnetic surfaces. Strictly speaking, "drive" refers to the motorized mechanical aspect that is distinct from its medium, such as a tape drive and its tape, or a floppy disk...
, and an 8-inch floppy disk drive.
A basic PERQ 1 system comprised a CPU board, a memory board (incorporating the frame buffer and monitor interface) and an
I/OIn computing, input/output, or I/O, refers to the communication between an information processing system , and the outside world – possibly a human, or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system, and outputs are the signals or data sent from it...
board (IOB, also called CIO). The IOB included a
Zilog Z80The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed and sold by Zilog from July 1976 onwards. It was widely used both in desktop and embedded computer designs as well as for military purposes...
microprocessorA microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a central processing unit on a single integrated circuit . The first microprocessors emerged in the early 1970s and were used for electronic calculators, using binary-coded decimal arithmetic on 4-bit words...
, an
IEEE-488IEEE-488 is a short-range, digital communications bus specification that has been in use for over 30 years. Originally created for use with automated test equipment, the standard is still in wide use for that purpose...
interface, an
RS-232In telecommunications, RS-232 is a standard for serial binary data signals connecting between a
DTE and a
DCE . It is commonly used in computer serial ports...
serial portIn computing, a serial port is a serial communication physical interface through which information transfers in or out one bit at a time...
, hard and floppy disk interfaces and
speech synthesisSpeech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware...
hardware. PERQ 1s also had a spare Optional I/O (OIO) board slot for additional interfaces such as
EthernetEthernet is a family of frame-based computer networking technologies for local area networks . The name comes from the physical concept of the ether...
.
A
graphics tabletA graphics tablet is a computer input device that allows one to hand-draw images and graphics, similar to the way one draws images with a pencil and paper...
was standard. Most PERQ 1s were supplied with an 8½ ×11-inch, 768×1024 pixel
portrait orientationPage orientation is the way in which a rectangular page is oriented for normal viewing. The two most common types of orientation are portrait and landscape...
white phosphor
monochromeMonochrome is a term generally used to describe painting, drawing, design, or photograph in one color or shades of one color. Monochromatic light is light of a single wavelength, though in practice it can refer to light of a narrow wavelength range...
monitor.
PERQ 2
The
PERQ 2 (codenamed
Kristmas during development) was announced in 1983. The PERQ 2 could be distinguished from the PERQ 1 by its wider, ICL-designed cabinet, with a lighter-coloured fascia, vertical floppy disk drive and three-digit diagnostic display.
The PERQ 2 used the same 16k WCS CPU as the PERQ 1A and had a 3-button
mouseIn computing, a mouse is a pointing device that functions by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface. Physically, a mouse consists of an object held under one of the user's hands, with one or more buttons...
in place of the graphics tablet. It was configured with a quieter 8-inch 35 MB
MicropolisMicropolis can refer to:* The United States micropolitan area* Micropolis Corporation, a hard disk manufacturer* Micropolis , an insect museum in France* The original working title for SimCity, a computer game...
1201 hard disk, 1 or 2 MB of RAM and had the option of the PERQ 1's portrait monitor or a 19-inch, 1280×1024 landscape orientation monitor.
Due to manufacturing problems with the original 3RCC PERQ 2 (also known as the
K1), ICL revised the hardware design, resulting in the
PERQ 2 T1 (or ICL 8222).
The later
PERQ 2 T2 (ICL 8223) and
PERQ 2 T4 models replaced the 8-inch hard disk with a 5¼-inch hard disk, which also allowed for a second disk to be installed internally.
The T4 model (of which only around 10 are thought to have been produced) had an extended 24-bit CPU and
backplaneA backplane is a circuit board that connects several connectors in parallel to each other, so that each pin of each connector is linked to the same relative pin of all the other connectors, forming a computer bus. It is used as a backbone to connect several printed circuit boards together to...
bus, allowing the use of a 4MB RAM board.
The PERQ 2 retained the PERQ 1's OIO slot, but replaced the IOB with either an EIO (Ethernet I/O) or NIO (Non-Ethernet I/O) boards. These were similar to the IOB, with the addition of a non-volatile
real-time clockA real-time clock is a computer clock that keeps track of the current time. Although the term often refers to the devices in personal computers, servers and embedded systems, RTCs are present in almost any electronic device which needs to keep accurate time.-Terminology:The term is used to avoid...
, a second RS-232 port, and (on the EIO board) an Ethernet interface.
PERQ 3
The
PERQ 3A (otherwise known as the ICL 3300 Advanced Graphics Workstation) was developed by ICL as a replacement for the PERQ 2. The PERQ 3A had an all-new hardware architecture based around a 12.5 MHz
MotorolaMotorola, Inc. is an American, multinational, Fortune 100, telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It is a manufacturer of wireless telephone handsets, and also designs and sells wireless network infrastructure equipment such as cellular transmission base stations and signal...
68020
microprocessorA microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a central processing unit on a single integrated circuit . The first microprocessors emerged in the early 1970s and were used for electronic calculators, using binary-coded decimal arithmetic on 4-bit words...
and 68881 floating-point unit, up to 2 MB of RAM and a
SCSISmall Computer System Interface, or SCSI , is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces...
hard disk. It was housed in a desktop "mini-tower"-style enclosure. The operating system was a port of
UNIX System VUnix System V, commonly abbreviated SysV , is one of the versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, termed Releases 1, 2, 3 and 4...
Release 2 called PNX 300. Prototype units were produced in 1985, but the project was cancelled before full production commenced, following the collapse of PERQ Systems Corp.
Another workstation design under development at the time of the company's demise, the
PERQ 3B (sometimes referred to as the
PERQ 5) was taken over by Crosfield Electronics for its Crosfield Studio 9500
page layoutPage layout is the part of graphic design that deals in the arrangement and style treatment of elements on a page. Beginning from early illuminated pages in hand-copied books of the Middle Ages and proceeding down to intricate modern magazine and catalog layouts, proper page design has long been a...
workstation.
Peripherals
Various optional OIO boards were produced for the PERQ 1 and 2: 3RCC OIO boards provided a 16-bit parallel PERQlink interface (intended for downloading microcode from another PERQ at boot time) plus Ethernet and/or a Canon CX
laser printerA laser printer is a common type of computer printer that rapidly produces high quality text and graphics on plain paper. As with digital photocopiers and multifunction printers , laser printers employ a xerographic printing process but differ from analog photocopiers in that the image is produced...
controller. Thus, a PERQ 2 could be configured with two Ethernet ports (EIO plus OIO). A dot-matrix printer could also be connected to the RS-232 or IEEE-488 ports. Other third-party OIO boards were produced to interface to other devices, such as QIC-02
tape driveA tape drive, which is also known as a streamer, is a data storage device that reads and writes data stored on a magnetic tape. It is typically used for archival storage of data stored on hard drives...
s or
video cameraA video camera is a camera used for electronic motion picture acquisition, initially developed by the television industry but now common in other applications as well. The earliest video cameras were those of John Logie Baird, based on the electromechanical Nipkow disk and used by the BBC in...
s.
Software
The PERQ's original
p-CodeP-code can refer to:* p-code machine * Code used in the UCSD p-System * P-code is also part of the Global Positioning System signal...
-like instruction set (called
Q-Code) was optimized for
PascalPascal is an influential imperative and procedural programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.A derivative known as Object Pascal...
(specifically, an extended PERQ Pascal). Q-Code instructions could be executed at a rate of up to 1 million instructions per second. This gave rise to the alternative definition of the PERQ name:
Pascal Evaluation Real Quick. In fact it was generally more efficient to use Pascal than to attempt to create "
assembly languageAssembly languages are a family of low-level languages for programming computers, microprocessors, microcontrollers, and other integrated circuits. They implement a symbolic representation of the numeric machine codes and other constants needed to program a particular CPU architecture...
" programs directly with Q-Code.
Operating systems
A variety of
operating systemAn operating system is an interface between hardware and user which is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the resources of the computer that acts as a host for computing applications run on the machine. As a host, one of the purposes of an operating...
s were developed for the PERQ. These included:
POS (PERQ Operating System): The initial single-task operating system for PERQ workstations, developed by 3RCC. POS and its utilities were written in PERQ Pascal.
MPOS (Multitasking POS): A
multitaskingIn computing, multitasking is a method by which multiple tasks, also known as processes, share common processing resources such as a CPU. In the case of a computer with a single CPU, only one task is said to be running at any point in time, meaning that the CPU is actively executing instructions...
version of POS, not officially released by 3RCC.
AccentAccent was an operating system kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University . Accent was developed as a follow-on to the Aleph kernel developed at the University of Rochester, fixing several of its problems and re-targeting its hardware support for networks of workstation machines instead of...
: A multitasking research operating system developed at CMU, with a
window managerA window manager is system software that controls the placement and appearance of windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. Most window managers are designed to help provide a desktop environment...
called Sapphire. Accent was a predecessor of the Mach kernel which many later operating systems would use. A
UNIX System VUnix System V, commonly abbreviated SysV , is one of the versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, termed Releases 1, 2, 3 and 4...
-compatible environment running under Accent in a Sapphire window, called
QNIX, was developed by
Spider SystemsSpider Systems Ltd. was a computer network products company, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was founded in 1983 by several former employees of ICL who had previously worked at ICL's Scottish Development Centre at Dalkeith Palace until its closure earlier that year.Spider Systems produced a wide...
.
PNX: A port of
UnixUnix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
for the PERQ, based on Seventh Edition Unix and
UNIX System IIIUNIX System III was a version of the Unix operating system released by AT&T's Unix Support Group . It was first released outside of Bell Labs in 1982. UNIX System III was a mix of various AT&T Unixes: PWB/UNIX 2.0, CB UNIX 3.0, UNIX/TS 3.0.1 and UNIX/32V...
. This was developed by ICL at
BracknellBracknell is a town in the Bracknell Forest borough of Berkshire, England. It lies to the south-east of Reading, southwest of Windsor and west of London....
and later
Dalkeith PalaceDalkeith Palace in Dalkeith, Midlothian, Scotland, is the former seat of the Duke of Buccleuch.Dalkeith Castle was located to the north east of Dalkeith, and was originally in the hands of the Grahams in the 12th century and given to the Douglas family in the early 14th Century. James Douglas of...
,
ScotlandScotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
for the UK research community. PNX used its own microcode, more appropriate for the C programming language, called
C-Code.
FLEXIn computing, there have been multiple systems named FLEX.-Alan Kay's FLEX system:Alan Kay developed his Flex system in the late 1960s while exploring ideas that would later evolve into the Smalltalk programming language.-RSRE FLEX Computer System:...
: Developed by the
Royal Signals and Radar EstablishmentThe Royal Signals and Radar Establishment was a scientific research establishment within the Ministry of Defence of the United Kingdom, located primarily at Malvern in Worcestershire. It was formed in 1976 in an amalgamation of earlier research establishments including the Royal Radar Establishment...
, FLEX was implemented in microcode and similar to other early workstation systems such as
Lisp machineLisp machines were general-purpose computers designed to efficiently run Lisp as their main software language. In a sense, they were the first commercial single-user workstations...
s,
UCSD PascalUCSD Pascal was a Pascal language system that ran on the UCSD p-System portable, highly machine-independent operating system. The University of California, San Diego Institute for Information Systems developed it in 1978 to provide students with a common operating system that could run on any of...
or
Modula-2Modula-2 is a computer programming language invented by Niklaus Wirth at ETH, around 1978, as a successor to his intermediate language Modula. Modula-2 was implemented in 1980 for the Lilith computer, which was commercialized in 1982 by startup company DISER as MC1 and MC2. DISER sold 120 units...
, except that the language of choice was
ALGOL 68ALGOL 68 is an imperative computer programming language that was conceived as a successor to the ALGOL 60 programming language, designed with the goal of a much wider scope of application and more rigorously defined syntax and semantics...
.
Applications
The PERQ was a popular early graphical workstation; therefore, it helped spawn many early third-party applications that took advantage of the
graphical user interfaceA graphical user interface is a type of user interface item that allows people to interact with programs in more ways than typing such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment with images rather than...
and
bitmapped graphicsIn computer graphics, a raster graphics image or bitmap is a data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium...
. Intran (around 1982) produced a pioneering graphical program suite called MetaForm, which consisted of the separate Graphics Builder, Font Builder, Form Builder, and File Manager programs. The PERQ also served as a dedicated platform for several pioneering
hypertextHypertext is text, displayed on a computer, with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices...
programs, such as
ZOGZOG was an early hypertext system developed at Carnegie Mellon University during the 1970s by Donald McCracken and Robert Akscyn. ZOG was first developed by Allen Newell and George Robertson to serve as the front end for AI and Cognitive Science programs brought together at CMU for a summer workshop...
,
KMSKMS, an abbreviation of Knowledge Management System, was a commercial second generation hypermedia system, originally created as a successor for the early hypermedia system ZOG...
, and
GuideGuide was a hypertext system originally developed by Peter J. Brown at the University of Kent in 1982. The original Guide implementation was for Three Rivers PERQ workstations running Unix. The Guide system was also the third hypertext system to be sold commercially, after it was taken over by...
. DP ("Drawing Package"), a
CADComputer-aided design is the use of computer technology for the design of objects, real or virtual. CAD often involves more than just shapes...
system used for creating
circuit diagramA circuit diagram is a simplified conventional graphical representation of an electrical circuit...
s on the PERQ, was written by Dario Giuse at CMU.
External links