| dbo:abstract
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- The Ferranti F100-L was a 16-bit microprocessor family announced by Ferranti in 1976 which entered production in 1977. It was the first microprocessor designed in Europe, and among the first 16-bit single-chip CPUs. It was designed with military use in mind, able to work in a very wide temperature range and radiation hardened. To deliver these capabilities, the F100 was implemented using bipolar junction transistors, as opposed to the metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) process used by most other processors of the era. The family included a variety of support chips including a multiply/divide unit, various memory support chips, timers and serial bus controllers. The F100 was priced at £39 in 1978 in 100-off quantities. Three models were offered at the same price; the commercial spec was rated at 8 MHz, industrial at 6.5 MHz at an extended temperature range, and military spec at 3.5 or 5 MHz with a temperature range from -55 C to +125 C. It was very cost competitive in the industrial and military markets, but less so in the commercial market where processors like the MOS 6502 were about $11 in the same 100 unit quantity. The line was updated with the F200-L in 1984. This was software compatible with the F100, but included the maths processor on the same die, expanded addressing to 128 kB, and allowed up to 1 MB of memory when paired with the new F220 memory management unit. Shortly after the F200 came to market, in 1987 Ferranti purchased International Signal and Control, a company soon discovered to be committing large amounts of fraud; this drove Ferranti into bankruptcy. The chip division was purchased by Plessey who continued producing some of the F100 family support chips as late as 1995. Owing to it being used almost entirely in the military realm, the F100 is little known in the wider retrocomputing field and few examples remain. (en)
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| rdfs:comment
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- The Ferranti F100-L was a 16-bit microprocessor family announced by Ferranti in 1976 which entered production in 1977. It was the first microprocessor designed in Europe, and among the first 16-bit single-chip CPUs. It was designed with military use in mind, able to work in a very wide temperature range and radiation hardened. To deliver these capabilities, the F100 was implemented using bipolar junction transistors, as opposed to the metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) process used by most other processors of the era. The family included a variety of support chips including a multiply/divide unit, various memory support chips, timers and serial bus controllers. (en)
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