Path: 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

[]
>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. 

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