CDC 160A
CDC 160-A with close-up of control panel
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| Developer | Seymour Cray |
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| Manufacturer | Control Data Corporation |
| Release date | 1960 |
| Introductory price | $100,000 equivalent to $809,561 in 2016 |
| Units shipped | 400 |
| Storage | 4096 words of magnetic core |
| Power | 115v, 12 amps |
| Dimensions | 29 x 61 1/2 x 30 inches |
| Weight | 810 lbs. |
| Successor | CDC 6000 series |
The CDC 160 series is a series of discontinued minicomputers built by Control Data Corporation. The CDC 160 and CDC 160-A are 12-bit minicomputers built from 1960 to 1965; the CDC 160G is a 13-bit minicomputer, with an extended version of the CDC 160-A instruction set, and a compatibility mode in which it did not use the 13th bit. The 160 was designed by Seymour Cray - reportedly over a long three-day weekend. It fit into the desk where its operator sat.
The 160 architecture uses ones' complement arithmetic with end-around carry.
NCR joint-marketed the 160-A under its own name for several years in the 1960s.
The CDC 160-A was a simple piece of hardware, and yet provided a variety of features which were scaled-down capabilities found only on larger systems. It was therefore an ideal platform for introducing neophyte programmers to the sophisticated concepts of low-level Input/output (I/O) and interrupt systems.
All 160 systems had a paper-tape reader, and a punch, and most had an IBM Electric typewriter modified to act as a computer terminal. Memory on the 160 was 4096 12-bit words. The instruction set was small and RISC-like. The CPU had a 12-bit ones' complement accumulator but no multiply or divide. There was a full complement of instructions and several addressing modes. Indirect addressing was almost as good as index registers. The instruction set supported both relative (to the current P register) and absolute. The original instruction set did not have a subroutine call instruction and could only address one bank of memory.
In the 160-A model, a "return jump" and a memory bank-switch instruction was added. Return-jump allowed simple subroutine calls and bank switching allowed other 4K banks of memory to be addressed, albeit clumsily, up to a total of 32,768 words. The extra memory was expensive and had to live in a separate box as large as the 160 itself. The 160-A model could also accept a multiply/divide unit, which was another large and expensive peripheral box.
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