IBM 8100
The IBM 8100 was at one time IBM’s principal distributed processing engine, providing local processing capability under two incompatible operating systems – DPPX and DPCX. In 1978 IBM announced the 8100 Information System and the Distributed Programming Processing Executive (DPPX). These products were intended to provide turnkey distributed processing capabilities in a centrally controlled and managed network. It never saw much success, and became moribund when host-based networks went out of fashion. This, coupled with IBM's recognition that they had too many hardware and software systems with similar processing power and function, led to announcement in March 1986 that the 8100 line would not be expanded and a new System/370 compatible processor line, ES/9370, would be provided to replace it. In March 1987, IBM announced that it intended to provide in 1989 a version of DPPX/SP that would run on the new ES/9370. A formal announcement in March 1988 of DPPX/370, a version of DPPX that executed on the ES/9370 family of processors. DPPX/370 was made available to customers in December 1988. \r Architecture The 8100 was a 32-bit processor, but its instruction set reveals its lineage as the culmination of a line of so-called Universal Controller processors internally designated UC0 (8-bit), UC.5 (16-bit) and UC1 (32-bit). Each processor carried along the instruction set and architecture of the smaller processors, allowing programs written for a smaller processor to run on a larger one without change. \rFurther reading Porting DPPX from the IBM 8100 to the IBM ES/ 9370: Feasibility and overview[1]; by R. Abraham, B. F. Goodrich; IBM Systems Journal, Volume 29, Number 1, Page 90 (1990);
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