The TMS32010 shipped in 1983. It had 144 words of on-chip data RAM, a 16 by 16 multiplier that produced a result in one instruction cycle, and a

By the mid-nineties the PC industry had a fast, cheap, well-supported bus, and the industrial world had mechanics that could survive a factory floor. CompactPCI, published in 1995,

A real-time system is not a fast system. It is a system whose worst case is known. The distinction decides the architecture, the operating system, and often the

Selecting a part for a product with a ten-year service life is a sourcing decision wearing an engineering costume. Peripherals and clock speed decide whether the design works.

PC/104 solved a mechanical problem before it solved an electrical one. An industrial controller that has to survive vibration cannot rely on a card edge sitting in a

VMEbus was specified in 1981 around the Motorola 68000 and the Eurocard mechanics that European instrument makers already had on the shelf. Forty years later there are still