Delco's GMCM turns into the 6801

[Peter Gargano]

Someone told me about this interesting article written by Gary
Daniels of Motorola and appearing in IEEE Micro, December 1996.
It's a 526 kb PDF 11 page file.

  http://www.computer.muni.cz/pubs/micro/articles/m60021.pdf 

There's some reference to auto makers, but for me, the most
interesting part was Delco going to Motorola in 1976 and asking
them to develop an 8 bit MOS auto controller based on the 6800 that
they called the GMCM (GM Custom Microprocessor). This was a 6800
with new 16 bit instructions, additional index register instructions,
an 8x8 multiply, and fast execution cycles on key store and branch
instructions (quoting from the article).

Apparently much of the design was done on Daniels' home pool table.

Motorola asked Delco if they could use this design as their own
commercial product. Delco agreed and the 6801 was born.

Delco isn't mentioned again until 1984 when the 6801 was implemented
in HCMOS and became the 68HC11 (with 130,000 transistors).

And in 1989 Delco got Motorola to design the GMPX, or HC32, or the
68332 (400,000 transistors).

Anyway, it's worth a read if you half interested in history.

Peter.
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