After its creation, an improved version was produced called the Bellmac 32A, then cancelled along with its successor, the "Hobbit" C-language Reduced Instruction Set Processor (CRISP).
[1] Later, Steve Law developed a computer program that aided in the digitization of the initial designs.
The development of the Bellmac 32 produced a novel circuit design technique called domino logic, deemed a breakthrough for the production of the microprocessor.
These complications limited the final speed, when the entire chip was finished and tested, to 2 MHz.
Adjustments to maximize the size of transistors and resistors and minimizing interconnections were fundamental in meeting the specifications.
[2] Testing of chips produced from the completed circuit exceeded the design speed, and reached clock frequencies of 7, 8, and even 9 MHz.
By performing "block moves", the process switching instructions are able to automatically reconfigure the active virtual memory layout without further intervention by the operating system, and combining this reconfiguration with updates to the processor registers, these instructions permit the execution environment of process to be conveniently restored.
The selection of a suitable interrupt handler involves a table of PCB pointers in a fixed virtual memory location.
To switch between privilege levels, the "controlled transfer" mechanism is provided, relying on a two-level table hierarchy to define the privilege level using the Processor Status Word (PSW) register and the location of each procedure or handler to be invoked by a "controlled call", thus providing a system call mechanism.
Exception handling employs this controlled call mechanism to direct execution to an appropriate handler, which for a "normal" exception is found via a particular second-level table whose entries each correspond to a particular Internal State Code (ISC), defined in the PSW register.
Three of these (ISP, PCBP, PSW) are privileged, used to support the operating system and can be written only when the microprocessor is in kernel mode.