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From: koopman@a.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Philip Koopman)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Japanese Josephson breakthrough?  Implications?
Summary: stack machines are smaller
Message-ID: <7412@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 23 Dec 89 12:58:20 GMT
References: <1546@aber-cs.UUCP> <33896@mips.mips.COM>
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 22

In article <33896@mips.mips.COM>, keith@mips.COM (Keith Garrett) writes:
> 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

16-bit stack machines (such as the Novix 4000 and RTX 2000) tend to have
even fewer gates.  The Novix 4000 was so named because it fit on a
4000-gate gate array.  And, you don't need more than 16 or so stack
elements on-chip to get good speed.

  Phil Koopman                koopman@greyhound.ece.cmu.edu   Arpanet
  2525A Wexford Run Rd.
  Wexford, PA  15090
Senior Scientist at Harris Semiconductor.
I don't speak for them, and they don't speak for me.