Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!obiwan!keith
From: keith@mips.COM (Keith Garrett)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Japanese Josephson breakthrough?  Implications?
Message-ID: <33896@mips.mips.COM>
Date: 21 Dec 89 16:19:39 GMT
References: <1546@aber-cs.UUCP>
Sender: news@mips.COM
Reply-To: keith@mips.COM (Keith Garrett)
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 30

In article <1546@aber-cs.UUCP> pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
>In article <25177@cup.portal.com> mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson)
>writes:
>
>    Hmmm...  26,000 devices, that's about 1.5 ENIAC's?  I wonder what sort of
>    architecture they used?  The most useful things I can think of at that
>    level would be a rasterizing engine and a cryptographic machine.
>
>I may be entirely wrong, but the Z8000, which is not a terribly useless
>processor, and used to run Unix multiuser without trouble at the level of a
>PDP-11/44 or a VAX 750, was something like 17,000 gates/transistors/devices
>or whatever (yes, I know that the "whatever" matters), which is in the same
>ballpark. Anybody knows better?
my understanding is that the Z8000 contains around 50,000 transistors, which
is about 17,000 equivalent logic gates.
>
>Actually, has anybody thought of the Z8000 as a "RISC"/simple machine (sure
>the architecture was clean enough), and/or thought doing it in GaAs or other
>fast, low density technology?
>
>In case you have not understood, I liked the Z8000 a lot. If only IBM had
>chosen it instead of the 8088/8086... If only Zilog had managed to do an MMU
>and restartable instructions soon enough...
the MMU was fairly early, and the virtual memory changes turned out to be
relatively easy. the development tools were very late. i think the lack of
tools, and a weak marketing effort are what did in the z8000.
-- 
Keith Garrett        "This is *MY* opinion, OBVIOUSLY"
UUCP: keith@mips.com  or  {ames,decwrl,prls}!mips!keith
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