My curiosity got the best of me, and I started to google it.  Interesting
how "google" has been added as a verb to the English language, but that is
another subject. ;-)

From CPU Shack:

HP's (and the world's) first fully 32 bit microprocessor was FOCUS (pre
> 1984). It was a huge (at the time) 450,000 transistor chip with a stack
> based instruction set, described as "essentially a gigantic microcode<http://www.cpushack.com/CPU/cpuAppendC.html#microcode>ROM with a simple 32 bit data path bolted to its side". Performance wasn't
> spectacular, but it was used in a pre-Unix workstation from HP. It led to
> the Vision, a fairly complex capability-based architecture. At the same
> time as Vision, the Spectrum project was started at HP labs based on the IBM
> 801 <http://www.cpushack.com/CPU/cpuAppendA.html#801>, and further
> developed with implementation groups.


Ah, the days of brilliant HP engineering, but there I go again.

A great reference with further reference links at the end:
http://www.openpa.net/systems/hp-9000_520.html

Now back to work, though I really want to find out more about HP's FOCUS
cpu.  Damn priorities!!

Pete

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