How many transistors does the Prop have?

W9GFO · 2009-11-29 00:45

The Penryn chip has 820,000,000 transistors. That's a lot!

How many are in the Propeller chip?

How many will be in the Prop II?

Rich H

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The Simple Servo Tester, a kit from Gadget Gangster.

Beau Schwabe · 2009-11-29 00:59

W9GFO,

I'm not at my desk right now to check, but I know the average transistor density for the Propeller II is about 1 transistor for every·2 square microns, so at 7mm square that works out to about 12,250,000 transistors.· Now, that's a little biased, since the last time I looked at the transistor density I was looking at the Propeller memories.

It really depends on the die size of the IC that you are refering to and what the average transistor density is.

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Beau Schwabe

IC Layout Engineer
Parallax, Inc.

cgracey · 2009-11-29 01:26

The current Propeller chip has around 3,000,000 transistors.

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Chip Gracey
Parallax, Inc.

Beau Schwabe · 2009-11-29 06:21

Here is a breakdown of the Prop II.· This does not take into account how many times each instance of the layout block will be used.

Memories:
----------------------
MEM_COG:
Transistors = 344266
       Area = 619008 um^2
MEM_DUALPORT:
Transistors = 44724
       Area = 113005 um^2
MEM_RAM:
Transistors = 1673104
       Area = 1736650 um^2
MEM_ROM:
Transistors = 303876
       Area = 572428 um^2
 
 
Digital:
----------------------
FUNC_MUL_16x16:
Transistors = 11424
       Area = 45260 um^2
FUNC_CORDIC:
Transistors = 16764
       Area = 52650 um^2
 
 
Analog:
----------------------
FUSE_BIT:
Transistors = 49
       Area = 953 um^2
PLL_MUL:
Transistors = 489 
       Area = 6988 um^2
OSC_SHELL:
Transistors = 158
       Area = 32076 um^2
BOD_SHELL:
Transistors = 200
       Area = 71703 um^2
PUD_SHELL:
Transistors = 152
       Area = 106372 um^2

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Beau Schwabe

IC Layout Engineer
Parallax, Inc.

cgracey · 2009-11-29 06:46

From Beau's data, it is evident that a 256Kb hub ROM is smaller than a 16Kb 4-port cog RAM. The ROM is over 16 times denser per bit of storage.

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Chip Gracey
Parallax, Inc.

VIRAND · 2009-11-29 17:40

I'm not sure if this concept is implied, but in the time of transistor radios, sometimes they were labeled
as having a certain number, some of which had no active role in performance gain. And hypothetically,
if a subsection of the circuit could be made with less transistors, then the power consumed by more is a loss.

Imagine using 8 MPUs, 9 SRAMs, a PROM, and 2 PIO/PIA ... 20 chips as 1 Propeller.
You'd need more voltage and current, and run slow and Hot, and have a lot more transistors.

How many transistors does the Prop have?

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