Ignite (microprocessor)
 An Ignite Ia microprocessor | |
| Designer | Nanotronics, PTSC |
|---|---|
| Bits | 32-bit |
| Introduced | 1994 |
| Design | RISC |
| Type | Stack machine |
| Endianness | Big |
| Registers | |
| General-purpose | 52 (including stacks) |
Ignite (formerly ShBoom and PSC 1000, stylized as IGNITE) is a stack machine-based reduced instruction set computer (RISC) microprocessor architecture.[1] The architecture was originally developed by Nanotronics, which was later acquired by Patriot Scientific Corporation. The processor is one of the few commercially produced microprocessors that use a stack-based computing model. Target applications for this unique architecture were mainly embedded devices (due to the processor's low power use) and efficient implementation of virtual stack machines, such as the Java virtual machine or the stack machine underlying the Forth programming language. The product was unsuccessful in the market.
Notable features
Besides its unusual stack-based architecture, the processor had several other features, such as micro loops, and up to four instructions per 32-bit instruction word.
References
- ^ PSC1000 Microprocessor Reference Manual. Patriot Scientific Corporation. 1999.