In the six years that the PDP-11 has been on the market, more than 20,000 units in 10 different models have been sold. Although one of the original system design goals was a broad range of models, the actual range of 500 to 1 (in cost and memory size) has exceeded the design goals.
The PDP-11 was designed to be a small computer, yet its design has been successfully extended to high-performance models. This paper recollects the experience of designing the PDP-11, commenting on its success from the point of view of its goals, its use of technology, and on the people who designed, built and marketed it.
C. Gordon Bell, “What Have We Learned from the PDP-11,” The 3rd Annual Symposium on Computer Architecture Conference Proceedings, pp. l-14, 1976.
This year represents the 60th anniversary of the founding of the company that produced the PDP-11. It is also 40 years since this paper was written, so I thought it would be entertaining to review Bell’s retrospective through the lens of our own 20/20 hindsight.
Dave Cheney, “What Have We Learned from the PDP-11,” 2017.