K-202

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K-202 was the first Polish 16-bit minicomputer invented by Jacek Karpiński between 1971-1973. Approximately 30 units were produced. The later production was halted as it was not in line with the ES EVM (Unified System of Electronic Computers in the Soviet Union) causing the inventor to emigrate. The K-202 had two main rivals Data General SuperNOVA minicomputer (United States) and the CTL Modular One (United Kingdom), although those were far more expensive to produce.

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The K-202 was capable to run one million operations per second [1] which was far more than computers of the time could compute. K-202 was the first minicomputer which used paging technique, providing 8MB of virtual memory,[2] a mechanism already well-established in larger mainframe computers of the time. It seems that the real configurations of K-202 never reached the possible 8 MB of memory, 144 KB being the largest advertised configuration.

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  1. ^ "Minicomputer K-202 [...]
    • 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 Mb/s [note: i.e. 1M words/sec]
    • Implementation method - TTL/MSI integrated circuits
    • Memory cycle 0.7 μs
    • Processing speed of 1 million operations/second" K-202 factsheet in Polish
  2. ^ "K-202 was based on the small- and medium-scale integrated circuits. It worked at a speed of a million operations per second. It was faster than PCs ten years later! I used a complete novelty there - increased memory capacity through paging. It is my invention. In London, on the Olympia exposition, stand one by one: british Modular One, american machines and K-202; each one a 16-bit machine. And each one have got 64k memory, but K-202 had 8 mega! Everyone asked me, how I did it. I answered: I did it, and, as you can see, it works. (...) Three years later paging was used by every manufacturer and is used even today. How stupid of me not having it patented." An interview with Jackek Karpiński published in CRN Polska journal (source in Polish)
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