Prints for an 11/70

From: jpero_at_sympatico.ca <(jpero_at_sympatico.ca)>
Date: Tue Dec 11 16:58:32 2001

> Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 21:48:22 -0500 (EST)
> From: Boatman on the River of Suck <vance_at_ikickass.org>
> To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
> Subject: Re: Prints for an 11/70
> Reply-to: classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org

> On Tue, 11 Dec 2001, Dave McGuire wrote:
>
> > Jeeeeezus Sridhar, how fast did you have in mind?
>
> I was thinking somewhere in the range of a gigahertz.
>
> Peace... Sridhar

Dave is right on that "Jeeeeezus" part. And my eyes popped.

At 1Gighurtz, that is squarely in the one or two inches of traces
between CPU and one or two chipsets in turn talking to sluggard
chipsets for I/O and outside world stuff, cache intergated w/ CPU die
itself, outside talking at DDR rate 266MHz DDR or 333Mhz DDR. 60W
heat, .18 or .13 microns, 1.7V, very tiny voltage swings for 1 and 0
signaling, and fairly heavy on pipelining.

In other words, $$$.

This doesn't means lost the game. Far from it. Athlon XP 1900+
or XP 2200+ (AMD plans to release this in spring to keep Intel
hopping.) on 266A chipset, DDR ram, SCSI stuff. All you do is
finish the emulation and build up a industial i/o PCI card to
interface with front panel for i/o, tape i/o etc. Put the actual
core stuff in a standard ATX.

CPU makers had to kick off the external cache and stuff the
smaller cache (often 256K, 128K, 64K or ugh, no cache ala
original celerons) into same CPU die when they went past 600MHz.
AMD kept with external cache on slot A processor for awhile longer
with few higher clocked CPUs but at big penalty in clock by dividing
the CPU clock lower than 1/2 for L2 extneral cache. Intel didn't and
went directly to coppermine above 600MHz. I really miss the 512K
cache bec time and again I find that size is needed for best
performance. But both Intel and AMD is already moving to .13
microns to permit small die (to get enough useable dies from one
wafer.) with 512K. FYI: Intel already have PIII w/ 512K Tualatin
($$$) and will get revised P4 w/ 512K this spring. Ick. AMD have
it in works on 512K athlon, yay. I wish for 1MB athlon seriously.
:-I

Cheers,

Wizard
Received on Tue Dec 11 2001 - 16:58:32 GMT