Need Info on DEC 11/84 Board, M8190

From: William Donzelli <william_at_ans.net>
Date: Sun Oct 18 21:21:43 1998

> Not to mention power problems! But I have the feeling that's a
> bit small! Nothing on the scale of the Pentium II has ever been
> achieved with transistors, never mind relays, and I'm sure they
> tried. For example, it would be possible to place transistors at
> 1 per cubic inch, and have the cool adequately, but it's clearly
> never been attempted, because if it were, there would be boxes
> to plug into a PC XT to get Pentium II speeds.

I think CDC and IBM did a pretty good job in the mid to late 1960s with
thier mainframes. CDC used extremely tight packed circuit boards, but
fairly standard transistor packages, and manages to get a pretty
respectable performance from their 6000 series. IBM also did a pretty good
job with the classic S/360s. They managed to really pack the things in,
mounting the transistor dies directly to the ceramic "circuit boards"
inside the SLTs (those aluminum covered square packages).

I really do not know how many transistors went into those big bits of
iron, but it certainly was a great deal. A million may not be too far off.

William Donzelli
william_at_ans.net
Received on Sun Oct 18 1998 - 21:21:43 BST