discrete transistors

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Mon Oct 19 16:35:43 1998

William Donzelli <william_at_ans.net> wrote:
> The CDC 6600 managed to get about 3 mips...not too bad. The things
> would really scream (back then, that is) when everything was in the
> cache. 1966 or so, not an IC in sight...

Yes, and again that proves my point. A discrete transistor based computer
can not compete with a high-end monolithic microprocessor. The laws of
physics conspire against it.

Motorola claims to have started shipping ECL integrated circuits in 1962.
Why were people still building computers using discrete transistors for
years after that? Many of the high-end computers used discrete
implementations of non-saturating logic that was very similar to ECL.

Eric
Received on Mon Oct 19 1998 - 16:35:43 BST