PDP-8
A PDP-8 on display at The National Museum of Computing in Bletchley, England. This example is from the first generation of PDP-8s, built with discrete transistors and later known as the Straight 8. | |
| Developer | Digital Equipment Corporation |
|---|---|
| Product family | Programmed Data Processor |
| Type | Minicomputer |
| Released | March 22, 1965 |
| Introductory price | US$18,500, equivalent to about $189,000 in 2025 |
| Units sold | 50,000+ |
| Platform | PDP 12-bit |
| Predecessor | PDP-5 |
| Successor | PDP-12 |
The PDP-8 is a family of 12-bit minicomputers that was produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Launched in 1965, it was the first minicomputer to sell for under $20,000, and the $25,000 mark for a complete system would later be a defining characteristic of the minicomputer class. Over 50,000 units were sold during the model's lifetime.
Its basic design follows the pioneering LINC but has a smaller instruction set, which is an expanded version of the PDP-5 instruction set. To lower the cost of implementation, the system leaves out a number of commonly used functions which have to be written using combinations of other instructions. This leads to complex programs.
The PDP-12 is an offshoot of the PDP-8 with a processor that can run programs for the PDP-8 and LINC systems. The successor to the PDP-8 line is the PDP-11, which featured a much more complete instruction set and was not backward compatible.