computer science

Philips 68070

Philips 68070 is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Philips 68070 rather than just read about it. In short: The SCC68070 is a discontinued Motorola 68000–based 16/32-bit processor produced under license by Philips Semiconductors. The processor was co-developed by Philips Semiconductors and Signetics and introduced in October 1985.

Key takeaways

Philips 68070 belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Philips 68070 to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Philips 68070 from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The SCC68070 is a discontinued Motorola 68000–based 16/32-bit processor produced under license by Philips Semiconductors. The processor was co-developed by Philips Semiconductors and Signetics and introduced in October 1985. Philips had been a second source of the Motorola 68000 before introducing the 68070. It was marketed by Philips as a high-performance microcontroller to compete with the Intel 80186. It suffered from poor adoption rates on account of its high cost due to the large size of its die. In 1990, Philips released the companion SCC66470 VSC (Video and Systems Controller) for the 68070. Both were adopted for Philips's ill-fated CD-i line of interactive entertainment systems. The CD-i soon became the 68070's overwhelming usage. Despite its numbering, the 68070 predates the Motorola 68030 and later models- it does not follow Motorola's own chronological numbering scheme and is not (as might otherwise be implied) the successor to the 68060 which was released approaching a decade after the 68070.

Specifications The Philips 68070 was initially fabricated with a 2-μm CMOS process and was packaged in an 84-pin plastic leaded chip carrier. Additions to the Motorola 68000 core include:

Operation from 4 to 17.5 MHz Inclusion of a minimal, segmented MMU supporting up to 16 MB of memory Built-in DMA controller I2C bus controller UART 16-bit counter/timer unit 2 match/count/capture registers allowing the implementation of a pulse generator, event counter or reference timer Clock generator Differences from the Motorola 68000 core include the following:

Instruction execution timing is completely different. Interrupt handling has been simplified. The SCC68070 has MC68010 style bus-error recovery. They are not compatible, so exception error processing is different. The SCC68070 lacks a dedicated address generation unit (AGU), so operations requiring address calculation run slower due to contention with the shared ALU. This means that most instructions take more cycles to execute, for some instructions significantly more, than a 68000. The MMU is not compatible with the Motorola 68451 or any other "standard" Motorola MMU, so operating system code dealing with memory protection and address translation is not generally portable. Enabling the MMU also costs a wait state on each memory access. While the SCC68070 is mostly binary compatible with the Motorola 68000, there is no equivalent chip in the Motorola 680x0 series. In particular, the SCC68070 is not a follow-up to the Motorola 68060, which came out in 1994 (postdating the 68070 by nearly a decade).

References

External links xs4all.nl/~ganswijk/chipdir/reg/68070.txt SCC68070 datasheet

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Philips 68070

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Philips 68070 claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Philips 68070 before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Philips 68070 ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Philips 68070

In research: Philips 68070 appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Philips 68070 in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Philips 68070 is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 68k microprocessors, Computer hardware stubs, Microcontrollers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Philips 68070 outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Philips 68070 in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Philips 68070 means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Philips 68070 out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Philips 68070 in simple terms?

Why does Philips 68070 matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Philips 68070?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Philips 68070.