Kronos is a series of 32-bit processor equipped printed circuit board systems, and the workstations based thereon,

History

In 1984, the Kronos Research Group (KRG) was founded by four students of the Novosibirsk State University, two from the mathematics department (Dmitry "Leo" Kuznetsov, Alex Nedoria) and two from the physics department (Eugene Tarasov, Vladimir Vasekin). At that time, the main objective was to build home computers for the KRG members.

In 1985, the group joined the Russian fifth generation computer project START, in which Kronos became a platform for developing multiprocessor reconfigurable Modular Asynchronous Developable Systems (MARS), and played a lead role in developing the first Russian full 32-bit workstation and its software.

During 7 years (1984–1991) the group designed and implemented:

  • Kronos 2.1 and 2.2 – 32-bit processor boards for DEC LSI-11
  • Kronos 2.5 – 32-bit processor board for Labtam computers
  • Kronos 2.6 – 32-bit workstation

The project START was finished in 1988. During the post-START years (1988–1991), several Russian industrial organizations expressed interest in continuing the Kronos development and some had been involved in facilitating the construction of Kronos and MARS prototypes, including the design of a Kronos-on-chip. However, changing funding levels and the chaotic economic situation during perestroika kept those plans from being realized.

Architecture

The Kronos instruction set architecture was based on Niklaus Wirth's Modula-2 workstation Lilith, developed at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) of Zürich Switzerland, which in turn was inspired by the Xerox Alto developed at Xerox PARC.

In design, it is similar to the OS Medos-2, developed for the Lilith workstation, at ETH Zurich, by Svend Erik Knudsen with advice from Niklaus Wirth.

References

  • , history in Russian
  • The Kronos Research Group recovered from Internet Archive
  • A Brief History of Modula and Lilith
  • Acquisition of a Kronos workstation and more by the National Museum of Science and Industry in London
  • Historical source code from Kronos 198x USSR 32-bit workstation
  • Emulator for the Kronos workstation (via Internet Archive) runs on Windows-NT; tested thereon successfully. Two logins are possible: <code>sys</code> or <code>guest</code>, both password free. See also: More Documentation of Kronos in Russian