Article View: comp.arch
Article #20266Re: So, can you really fab 10**6 transistors now?
From: Allen J. Baum
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1989 18:12
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1989 18:12
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>In article <62230001@hpl-opus.HP.COM> poulton@hpl-opus.HP.COM (Ken Poulton) writes:
>> Failing that, are there any other
>> similarly sized chips that have made it out of the lab?
>
>Sure. In *1982*, HP presented (at ISSCC) a 32bit CPU with
>450K transistors. It was fabbed in a 1.3um NMOS process. Yield was
>microscopic at the time of the paper, but soon came up to quite
>good levels. It was the CPU for the HP 9000 series 500, which
>I think we still sell.
>
>Ken Poulton
>poulton@hplabs
This is (probably unknowingly) a slight exaggeration. The HP "Focus" chip had
450K transistor SITES. Since this was a microprogrammed machine, many of the
sites were in the ROM, where (roughly) half were used. The number of
transistors was less than 450K. Still, it was a fair achievement.
--
baum@apple.com (408)974-3385
{decwrl,hplabs}!amdahl!apple!baum
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!apple!baum From: baum@Apple.COM (Allen J. Baum) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: So, can you really fab 10**6 transistors now? Message-ID: <27205@apple.Apple.COM> Date: 13 Mar 89 18:12:05 GMT References: <7392@polya.Stanford.EDU> <62230001@hpl-opus.HP.COM> Reply-To: baum@apple.UUCP (Allen Baum) Organization: Apple Computer, Inc. Lines: 22