CPU of the Day: MMI 6701 Bit-Slice
In 1974 Monolithic Memories Inc. (MMI) announced the 6701 bit slice device. At its heart the 6701 is a 4-bit ALU much like the 74181 TTL IC. The 6701 adds a register, and some other support circuitry on chip making it much more adaptable. The 6701 has an approximate complexity of 1000 gates (meaning it would replace 1000 gates worth of TTL). The 6701 was made on a bipolar process and ran at 5.2MHz. Later versions would up this speed to around 11MHz.
6701D - 1976
The 6701 continues on until around 1980 by which time the AMD 2901 bit-slice processor had come to completely dominate the market. The Soviets however cloned/modified the 6701 as the 1802VS1 through the 80’s and into the 1990’s.
March 24th, 2015 at 4:09 am
The mmi6701 is 4bit and k1802vs1 is 8bit, so they are different. I’m not sure if they are diffenrent in terms of internal architecture.