discrete transistors

From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis_at_freegate.com>
Date: Mon Oct 19 17:43:22 1998

At 09:32 PM 10/19/98 +0000, you wrote:
>My entire point was that it is essentially impossible to build a
>discrete-transistor machine compatible with a modern high-end single-chip
>microprocessor (such as a Pentium II) and achieve better performance than the
>single-chip implementation.

In fact it is physically impossible period. A 400Mhz Pentium II has a 2.5ns
base CPU clock frequency. To consider a circuit a 'lump' one would have to
keep the circuit under 2.5' (speed of light limit) in size. Using a sphere
2.5' in diameter and 10,000,000 transistors that means you would need your
transistors to use less than .0001 cubic inch of space each. It isn't going
to happen.

The whole reason Cray's are wired up as circles rather than linearly like a
mainframe is to reduce wire lengths (and with them speed of light delays).

--Chuck
Received on Mon Oct 19 1998 - 17:43:22 BST