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From: gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Don Gillies)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: R4000 - compatibilty questions
Message-ID: <1991Feb12.225634.13757@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 12 Feb 91 22:56:34 GMT
References: <49041@apple.Apple.COM>
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Lines: 9


I read an article today in "The Microprocessor Report" that said the
increase from 32 to 64 bits added approximately 10-15% to the size of
the chip.  This is quite surprising.  You'd think that going from 32
to 64 bits would double the size of the ALU and all the data paths and
registers.  Does this mean that the datapath and ALU and all the
registers accounted for only 10-15% of the microprocessor to begin
with?  What is the baseline design for this 10-15% increase in area?
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