Re: 600 transistor CPU (was: MINIMUM instruction set)

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Article #10868

#10868

From: Damon
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 23:56

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In article <1992Nov12.220301.23915@fcom.cc.utah.edu> caperkin@ursa11.law.utah.edu (Charles Perkins) writes:
>The following article brings to mind an interesting question...
>How small can we make a (reasonably useful) CPU?
>
>Assuming good density, how many of the above could we put on a chip
>using today's processes (We can make 16 Megabit dram chips... but dram is
>very regular.)
>
>How many transistors would it take to make a minimally sized 32-bit chip?
>Optimized for transistor count, not cycle speed, op-code simplicity, or
>speed of design.

Well, the processors in MasPar's new MP-2 go 32 to the chip, for a
total of 1 million transistors (Parallelogram 48).  I know that's not
exciting by your standards but it's a real 32-bit commercial CPU,
albeit as part of an SIMD array.

Damon
-- 
Damon Hart-Davis                          Internet: dhd@exnet.co.uk, d@hd.org

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From: dhd@exnet.co.uk (Damon)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: 600 transistor CPU (was: MINIMUM instruction set)
Message-ID: <Bxs7uE.Cp4@exnet.co.uk>
Date: 15 Nov 92 23:56:38 GMT
References: <1992Nov11.144304.10494@news.uiowa.edu> <1992Nov12.164510.28248@dartvax.dartmouth.edu> <1992Nov12.220301.23915@fcom.cc.utah.edu>
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