K-202 was a 16-bit

16-bit

-16-bit architecture:The HP BPC, introduced in 1975, was the world's first 16-bit microprocessor. Prominent 16-bit processors include the PDP-11, Intel 8086, Intel 80286 and the WDC 65C816. The Intel 8088 was program-compatible with the Intel 8086, and was 16-bit in that its registers were 16...

 minicomputer

Minicomputer

A minicomputer is a class of multi-user computers that lies in the middle range of the computing spectrum, in between the largest multi-user systems and the smallest single-user systems...

, invented by Polish

Poles

thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...

 scientist

Scientist

A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...

 Jacek Karpiński

Jacek Karpinski

Jacek Karpiński was a Polish pioneer in computer engineering and computer science.During WW2 he was a soldier of Batalion Zośka of Polish Home Army, awarded multiple times with a Cross of Valour...

 between 1971-1973 in cooperation with British

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

 companies Data-Loop and M.B. Metals. Approximately 30 units were produced. The later production was halted as it was not in line with the ES EVM

ES EVM

ES EVM was a series of clones of IBM's System/360 and System/370 mainframes, released in the Comecon countries under the initiative of the Soviet Union since the 1960s. Production continued until 1998...

 (Unified System of Electronic Computers in the Soviet Union) causing the inventor to emigrate. The K-202 had two main rivals Data General SuperNOVA

Data General Nova

The Data General Nova was a popular 16-bit minicomputer built by the American company Data General starting in 1969. The Nova was packaged into a single rack mount case and had enough power to do most simple computing tasks. The Nova became popular in science laboratories around the world, and...

 minicomputer (United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

) and the CTL

CTL

CTL can refer to:*Computation tree logic*Cut-to-length logging*Complex Text Layout languages*cytotoxic T cell *Commission de transport de la Ville de Laval...

 Modular One (United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

), although those were far more expensive to produce.

New features

The K-202 was capable of running one million operations per second, which was far more than similar computers of the time could manage, and faster than PCs built ten years later. K-202 was the first mini-computer which used the paging

Paging

In computer operating systems, paging is one of the memory-management schemes by which a computer can store and retrieve data from secondary storage for use in main memory. In the paging memory-management scheme, the operating system retrieves data from secondary storage in same-size blocks called...

 technique, providing 8 MB of virtual memory. K-202 was based on small- and medium-scale integrated circuits. It used a new technique for mini-computers of the period; increased memory capacity through paging. Three years later paging was used by every manufacturer (and is still used today). Paging was a mechanism already well-established in larger mainframe computer

Mainframe computer

Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...

s of the period. It seems that the real configurations of K-202 never reached the possible 8 MB of memory, 144 KB being the largest advertised configuration.

• Multiprogramming
• Multiprocessing
• 16-bit word
• More than 90 instructions
• 7 universal registers
• 16 ways of determining argument
• Operating memory of up to 4 million words
• Direct addressing of up to 64k words
• Autonomic data exchange with operating memories at the speed of 16 Mbit/s [note: i.e. 1M words/s]
• Implementation method - TTL/MSI integrated circuits
• Memory cycle 0.7 μs
• Processing speed of 1 million operations/second K-202 factsheet in Polish