The IIS Chip Gallery
ISNIK (1989)
by
| Application | Industrial |
| Technology | 1500 |
| Manufacturer | VLSI Tech |
| Type | Research |
| Package | PGA256 |
| Dimensions | 8000μm x 8000μm |
| Gates | 10 kGE |
| Voltage | 5 V |
| Clock | 25 MHz |
ISNIK is another chip from the K2, the distributed memory parallel processor supercomputer project. See also SNIK. The name stands for "Integrated Serial Network Interface Controller". One part of the chip realizes a token ring network which allows the transmission of data packets from one node's FIFO memory to another node's FIFO memory. Special consideration had to be given to synchronization problems as connecting nodes might have slightly different clock frequencies. The second part of the chip contains an interface to the Motorola 68030 microprocessor whcih realizes, in conjunction with the software the upper layers of the communication protocol. Address decoding, handshaking and interrupt handling are performed by this part.
The name is normally written as I heart SNIK. However as there were difficulties getting the chip to work, it was affectionally known as "ist nichts" (is nothing) in German.