The DMX-1000 Signal Processing Computer.
Dean Wallraff · University of Michigan Library Repository · 1978
The DMX-1000 is an ultra-fast 16-bit minicomputer designed especially for audio signal processing applications. The DMX-1000 is mostly digital. It synthesizes sound by calculating sampled waveform values and converting the stream of samples to analog form with one or more digital-toanalog converters (DACs). The DMX-1000 is designed to be added as a peripheral unit to another computer, called the master. It gives this master computer, which is probably a slower, more generalpurpose machine, the ability to digitally synthesize highquality audio signals. The DMX-1000 does the high-speed repetitive number-crunching required for the synthesis, and the master controls it in real-time. It is by microprogramming that the master computer controls the DMX-1000. The master provides a program and a set of parameters for it; the DMX 1000 executes the program over and over. Each execution of the program produces an output sample. Since the DMX-1000 has no branch instructions, any program will take the same amount of time to run each time it is executed; the samples will be evenly spaced. There are two high-speed memories in the DMX-1000the program memory and the data memory. The master computer may write into either of these at any time. The master provides the program for the DMX-1000 by writing it into the program memory. The data memory is used to hold constants, parameters, state variables, waveform lookup tables, and so forth.