NS32000 series (Microprocessors)

The NS32000, sometimes known as the 32k, is a series of microprocessors produced by National Semiconductor. Design work began around 1980 and it was announced at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in April 1981. The first member of the family came to market in 1982, briefly known as the 16032 before being renamed as the 32016. It was the first general-purpose microprocessor on the market that used 32-bit data internally: the Motorola 68000 had 32-bit registers and instructions to perform 32-bit arithmetic, but used a 16-bit ALU for arithmetic operations on data, and thus took twice as long as the 32016 to perform those arithmetic operations. However, the 32016 contained many bugs and often could not be run at its rated speed. These problems, and the presence of the otherwise similar 68000 which had been available since 1980, led to little use in the market despite considerable early interest. Several improved versions followed, including 1985's 32032 which was essentially a bug-fixed 32016 with an external 32-bit data bus. While it offered about 50% better speed than the 32016, it was outperformed by the 32-bit Motorola 68020, released a year prior. The 32532, released in 1987, outperformed the contemporary Motorola 68030 by almost two times, but by this time most interest in microprocessors had turned to RISC platforms and this otherwise excellent design saw almost no use as well. National was working on further improvements in the 32732, but eventually gave up attempting to compete in the central processing unit (CPU) space. Instead, the basic 32000 architecture was combined with several support systems and relaunched as the Swordfish microcontroller. This had some success in the market before it was replaced by the CompactRISC architecture in mid-1990s.