K-202 was a

16-bit 16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors. A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two mo ...

minicomputer, created by a team led by

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...

scientist A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosoph ...

Jacek Karpiński Jacek Karpiński (9 April 1927 21 February 2010) was a Polish pioneer in computer engineering and computer science. During World War II, he was a soldier in the Batalion Zośka of the Polish Home Army, and was awarded multiple times with a ...

between 1970–1973 in cooperation with

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

companies Data-LoopData-Loop
/ref> and M.B. Metals. Approximately 30 units were claimed to be produced. All units shipped to M.B. Metals were returned for service. Due to friction resulting from competition with

Elwro Elwro was a Polish company that manufactured mainframe and microcomputers from 1959 until 1989. Its plant was in Wroclaw. Computer models included Odra mainframe systems, and the Elwro 800 Junior microcomputer for education. Overview The Wr ...

, a government-backed competitor, the production of K-202 was blocked and Karpiński thrown out of his company under the allegations of sabotage and embezzlement. The K-202 had two main rivals Data General SuperNOVA minicomputer (

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

) and the CTL Modular One (

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

). Some time afterwards, K-202 had its successor, , hundreds units of which were built.

New features

The K-202 was capable of running about one million operations per second; however, its instruction set was not well suited to the typical tasks, making practical performance somewhat lower. The communist world was in a different place than the capitalist world in integrated circuit manufacture, the export of which was strictly controlled, and apparently this was the reason why (despite the remarkable performance and low price) there was no commercial interest from anywhere in the world. K-202 claimed to be the first mini-computer which used the

paging In computer operating systems, memory paging is a memory management scheme by which a computer stores and retrieves data from secondary storage for use in main memory. In this scheme, the operating system retrieves data from secondary storage ...

technique, providing 8 MB of virtual memory; however, what its constructors called paging was in fact a simple segmentation. Furthermore, the advertised upper limit of 8 MB of memory was practically unreachable due to signal propagation delays, 144 KB being the largest available configuration. K-202 was based on small- and medium-scale integrated circuits. * Multiprogramming * Multiprocessing * 16-bit word * More than 90 instructions * 7 universal registers * 16 ways of determining argument * Operating memory of up to 4 million words * Direct addressing of up to 64k words * Autonomic data exchange with operating memories at the speed of 16 Mbit/s ote: i.e. 1M words/s* Implementation method – TTL/MSI integrated circuits * Memory cycle 0.7 μs * Processing speed of 1 million operations/second

Bibliography

K-202 factsheet in Polish

PDF in Polish and English
# Reklamówka z MTP Poznań 1971 (Polish) # Brochure K-202 w j. angielskim z MTP Poznań 1971 in (English) # "Maszyna cyfrowa K-202 – organizacja logiczna" – course materials (Polish) # "Język operacyjny maszyny – JOM 1" – course materials (Polish) # "Opis podstawowego języka symbolicznego M.C. K-202 – ASSK" – course materials (Polish) * "System programowania minikomputera K-202 w języku Lisp 1.5. Instruction for programists, Poznań Instytut Automatyki Politechniki Poznańskiej 1974 (Polish) * "60 lat polskich komputerów. Historia romantyczna

MERA-400, K-202 successor

References

{{Reflist Minicomputers Early microcomputers 16-bit computers Science and technology in Poland