R6000

The R6000 is an ECL implementation of the MIPS architecture which was produced by Bipolar Integrated Technology. The R6000 miroprocessor did introduce the MIPS II instruction set. Its TLB and cache architecture are different from all other members of the MIPS family. The R6000 did not deliver the promised performance benefits, and although it saw some use in Control Data machines, it quickly disappeared from the mainstream market.

Linux Support

The R6000 is not supported by Linux/MIPS.

Documentation

In the spinout from SGI in 1999 MIPS Technologies inheritied the rights to the R6000 and eventually gave permission to distribute the R6000 documentation under the license below.

Documentation license

Copyright (c) 2004 MIPS Technologies, Inc.
All rights reserved.

Unpublished rights (if any) reserved under the copyright laws of the United States of America and other countries. The contents of this document may not be copied or duplicated in any form, in whole or in part, without the prior written permission of MIPS Technologies, Inc. ("MIPS Technologies").

MIPS Technologies does not assume any liability arising out of the application or use of this information, or of any error or omission in such information. Any warranties, whether express, statutory, implied or otherwise, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, are excluded. Except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from MIPS Technologies, the furnishing of this document does not give recipient any license to any intellectual property rights, including any patent rights, that cover the information in this document.

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Documentation files

There is nothing like an R6000 user's manual. Instead the available documentation is a bunch of papers, a few schematics and handwritten notes. Not all of it has been scanned yet; what has been scanned is available below

• r6000-cachesubsys-spec.tar.bz2
• r6000-cpu-chip-spec.tar.bz2
• r6000-tlb.tar.bz2
• r6010-floating-point-controller.tar.bz2
• r6300-cpu-board-spec.tar.bz2
• r6300-timing.tar.bz2

Mostly here in case a bold soul wants to try to ocr the documents and hardcore R6000 user and computer architecture archaelogists.