Like all works of art it could be seen as pointless but beautiful.
Surely it has some educational value. As in, this is what it takes to make a processor of the historical era of the beginning of the microprocessor, magnified a bit, and actually working.
If you are going to build a processor out of discrete transistors (as everyone should do once in their life ) Then why not make it a 6502 ?
If I was really going to build a processor out of discrete transistors I think it would have to be the ZPU architecture. I don't want 8 bits I want 32! And that is about the smallest design that will do it. With the bonus that there is a GCC target for it.
OK, the 555 and 741 Op Amp are pretty cool bits of kit! $35 doesn't seem unreasonable. I'm tempted too.
I saw the monster6502 on some tweets this weekend from Maker Faire - it was pretty mesmerizing watching it run. The say it would be a $1k-$5K kit, so I'm not so tempted by that one!!!
My first impulse was, "Okay they're doing it with logic ICs." But no! It's all discrete transistors, 4200 of them! Then my next impression was, "How the h3!! can you make a microprocessor with only 4200 transistors?" Those MOS engineers must've been geniuses.
I as far as I remember my reading of the history of these things the 6502 was designed by some runaways from Motorola who had designed the 6800 and had some good ideas about simplifying things and making a small, cheaper processor. That was available in 1975.
Meanwhile the ideas of Reduced Instruction Set Computing were brewing. The first example normally being quoted as available in 1980, the IBM 801.
Basically the MOS guys had built a RISC machine, perhaps without knowing it, five years ahead of time!
Then, the Acorn guys, who had been using 6502, wanted a 32 bit machine. Inspired by the 6502 they designed the ARM. A RISC machine. Which used notably few transistors, was low power, and faster than anything from Intel at the time.
Now, ARM is everywhere, in phones and tabs and embedded systems.
Talking about processor transistor counts a head honcho at Intel told me at the launch of the Intel i860 that it was the first chip built with more than 1000000 transistors. He said:
"At that point, making sure that every connection is actually connected to something at both ends becomes non-trivial"
Oddly the wiki transistor count page I linked to above does not include the i860.
Heater - I was taking a chip layout class in college at the time and I remember the professor discussing the 1M transistor i860. if I remember correctly when I was at Weitek there was a potential deal to transfer the i860 from Intel to Weitek. That shows you how well the part did in the market - I guess some people at Weitek thought they might be able to sell it into the postscript printer market.
Did you notice the passing reference to the Propeller in the story?
Can you hook it up inside an Apple ][ and run Oregon Trail?
No, not directly. It's neat to think of plugging the MOnSter 6502's in-circuit emulator (ICE) cable directly into a socket inside an Apple ][, but that wouldn't actually work. The Apple ][ design relies on a number of clever tricks that derive timing for video generation and peripheral control from the main clock signal — all of which will fail if you need to run at a slower speed.
There are some ways to get around limitations like these. For example, the Replica I computer (an Apple I clone) uses a Parallax Propeller chip to emulate a system clock and some of the timing-dependent external processing.
I liked the 6502, the 8080/5 the Z80 and Z8, the 68000 briefly, the 8051, the atmega8 and now the prop.
Where does the prop1 sit on the transistor count graph?
Leon
Posts: 7,620
Comments
Like all works of art it could be seen as pointless but beautiful.
Surely it has some educational value. As in, this is what it takes to make a processor of the historical era of the beginning of the microprocessor, magnified a bit, and actually working.
If you are going to build a processor out of discrete transistors (as everyone should do once in their life
rather silly as in not commercially viable, yes.
but from a 'too-much-time-on-their-hands' angle, it's pretty amazing.
I would like to see one 'running'.
The first micro-processor I ever programmed was a 6809. Wonderful machine but it's going to need a lot more transistors. 5490 in fact. 156% more !
After that I retrograded to the 8085 for a bit. That's still 990 more transistors. 28% more.
We start to see why the 6502 was so cheap.
Figures from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count
If I was really going to build a processor out of discrete transistors I think it would have to be the ZPU architecture. I don't want 8 bits I want 32! And that is about the smallest design that will do it. With the bonus that there is a GCC target for it.
+ 1
Yikes!
I saw the monster6502 on some tweets this weekend from Maker Faire - it was pretty mesmerizing watching it run. The say it would be a $1k-$5K kit, so I'm not so tempted by that one!!!
I do think "silly" is a bit harsh.....
-Phil
Edit: microcontroller microprocessor
Meanwhile the ideas of Reduced Instruction Set Computing were brewing. The first example normally being quoted as available in 1980, the IBM 801.
Basically the MOS guys had built a RISC machine, perhaps without knowing it, five years ahead of time!
Then, the Acorn guys, who had been using 6502, wanted a 32 bit machine. Inspired by the 6502 they designed the ARM. A RISC machine. Which used notably few transistors, was low power, and faster than anything from Intel at the time.
Now, ARM is everywhere, in phones and tabs and embedded systems.
We owe it all to the those 6502 guys.
"At that point, making sure that every connection is actually connected to something at both ends becomes non-trivial"
Oddly the wiki transistor count page I linked to above does not include the i860.
Can you hook it up inside an Apple ][ and run Oregon Trail?
No, not directly. It's neat to think of plugging the MOnSter 6502's in-circuit emulator (ICE) cable directly into a socket inside an Apple ][, but that wouldn't actually work. The Apple ][ design relies on a number of clever tricks that derive timing for video generation and peripheral control from the main clock signal — all of which will fail if you need to run at a slower speed.
There are some ways to get around limitations like these. For example, the Replica I computer (an Apple I clone) uses a Parallax Propeller chip to emulate a system clock and some of the timing-dependent external processing.
Why - Because you can. I want one of the 555s!
I liked the 6502, the 8080/5 the Z80 and Z8, the 68000 briefly, the 8051, the atmega8 and now the prop.
Where does the prop1 sit on the transistor count graph?
Dave
Does it matter because rather than counting the transistors in the Propeller, the Propeller makes the transistors count!
Bean