A retrospective on the Dorado, a high-performance personal computer

Kenneth A. Pier
1983 Proceedings of the 10th annual international symposium on Computer architecture - ISCA '83  
In late 1975, members of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center embarked on the specification of a high·performance successor to the Alto personal minicomputer, in use since 1973. After four years, the resulting machine, called the Dorado, was in use within the research community at PARCo This paper begins with an overview of the design goals, architecture, and implementation of the Dorado and then provides a retrospective view and critique of the Dorado project as a whole. The major machine
more » ... ectural features are evaluated, other project aspects such as design automation and management structures are explained, a chronological history with milestones is included, and a variety of accomplish· ments, red herrings, and shortfalls is discussed. The paper concludes with some speculations on what the project might have done differently and what might be done differently today instead of in the late 1970s. Although more than a dozen scientists and technicians contributed to the project, the evaluative and speculative parts of this paper are the sole responsibility of the author.
doi:10.1145/800046.801663 dblp:conf/isca/Pier83 fatcat:dznfc3ulqvdgzgw6fyjhe76elq