Nominal Semidestructor
Soundalike slang for "National Semiconductor", found among other places in the 4.3BSD networking sources.
During the late 1970s to mid-1980s this company marketed a series of
microprocessors including the NS16000 and NS32000 and several variants.
At one point early in the great
microprocessor race, the specs on these chips made them look like serious competition for the rising
Intel 80x86 and
Motorola 680x0 series.
Unfortunately, the actual parts were notoriously flaky and never implemented the full
instruction set promised in their literature, apparently because the company couldn't get any of the mask steppings to work as designed.
They eventually sank without trace, joining the
Zilog Z8000 and a few even more obscure also-rans in the graveyard of forgotten
microprocessors.
Compare
HP-SUX,
AIDX,
buglix,
Macintrash,
Telerat,
Open DeathTrap,
ScumOS,
sun-stools.
