Xref: utzoo comp.sys.misc:1823 comp.os.misc:613 comp.misc:3819 comp.arch:6665 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!mailrus!cornell!batcomputer!cloos From: cloos@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (James H. Cloos Jr.) Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc,comp.os.misc,comp.misc,comp.arch Subject: Re: The NeXT machine has been announced! (long) Message-ID: <6615@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> Date: 16 Oct 88 22:09:56 GMT References: <360@elan.UUCP> <2070@cloud9.UUCP> <5647@netnews.upenn.edu> Reply-To: cloos@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (James H. Cloos Jr.) Organization: Cornell Computer Services, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853 Lines: 37 In article <5647@netnews.upenn.edu> hodas@eniac.seas.upenn.edu.UUCP (Josh Hodas) writes: |In article <2070@cloud9.UUCP> cme@cloud9.UUCP (Carl Ellison) writes: |>In article <360@elan.UUCP>, jlo@elan.UUCP (Jeff Lo) writes: |>> |>> The entire CPU board consists of 45 chips as compared to 100+ for a fast |>> PC and 300+ for a typical workstation. Everything has been crammed onto |>> a 12 inch square board through the use of very dense surface mounted |>> devices, and a few large custom CMOS chips. |> |>By my calculator, 45 chips in 144 square inches |>gives 3.2 sq.in. per chip, on the average. |> |>Since a number of those need to be memory (therefore not monster PGAs), |>I don't see the need to cram. |> |>What's up here? |Well, It seems clear that the 45 chip count does not include the memory. |If we make the fairly safe assumption that Jobs is using nothing bigger |than 1 Megabit drams, then the 8 megs standard in the machine would require |64 chips (assuming no parity check bit), so it must be 45 chips in addition |to ram. The spec's were posted to alt.next. The board has slots for 1Mx32 bit SIMMs. That is 16 chips for the 16 M max mem. 8 of those 16 slots are populated by default. See alt.next for details. P.S. The article in alt.next seems as though it is to be published; in BYTE perhaps. (It was long enough that I'm not sure now if it did say BYTE, but the author(s) did say that they were the 1st journalists to get an in depth look at a beta version.) -JimC -- batcomputer!cloos@cornell.UUCP |James H. Cloos, Jr.|#include cloos@batcomputer.tn.cornell.EDU|B7 Upson, Cornell U|#include cloos@tcgould.tn.cornell.EDU |Ithaca, NY 14853 |"Entropy isn't what cloos@crnlthry.BITNET | +1 607 272 4519 | it used to be."