21–30 of 53 posts
Intel Core 2 - Yorkfield, 45 nm process technology, Number of Transistors: 820 Million MOS 6502, Number of Transistors: 3510 So in theory, a chip with 65536 MOS 6502 cores each with 64K of internal RAM (4Mb cache) could be made.
My crowning achievement was a multi-threaded kernel for a CNC punch. Since the stack was at a fixed memory address and there was no PUSHA, I had to change threads (in response to an IRQ) by sequentially pushing the registers on to the stack and then swapping the stack with a block copy. It worked! Crazy :/
I loved reading this article - thanks for posting. Awesome stuff! Makes me want to code my own circuit emulator :)
Intel Core 2 - Yorkfield, 45 nm process technology, Number of Transistors: 820 Million MOS 6502, Number of Transistors: 3510 So in theory, a chip with 65536 MOS 6502 cores each with 64K of internal RAM (4Mb cache) could be made.
Sure, if you completely ignore all of the extra circuitry for the on-chip network and cache coherency and everything else you would need. Transistor density is far from the limiting factor in the number of cores we can wedge into a single system.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the sensation of working with someone who's incredibly good. And, BTW, the 6502 was a work of art. Simple, elegant and fast (even at 1 MHz), it ran rings around the Z-80's you found in more expensive computers of the time. Plus, it was delightful to program.
Plus, it was delightful to program. Simple maybe, but not delightful to program. I don't know of any assembly language that is delightful to program. BTW, I knew someone from junior high & high school who could write code for the 6502 using a hex dump with amazing speed. You might have heard of him: Randy Linden.
Typing shit in to the hex monitor for a few years will do that :)
> We chatted for an hour about peripherally related topics. Broderbund, corporate America, the rat race, capitalism, freedom. I was seducing him.
At the critical psychological moment, I remarked: "You know, all my clipping is done on the byte boundaries."
There was a pause
http://jordanmechner.com/old-journals/page/33/
April 3, 1989
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe the 6502 could do things faster than the Z80. I once implemented the exact same program on a 6800 and a Z80. The 6800 is very close to the 6502. Speed wasn't an issue, but the Z80 version was noticeably bigger. And also felt more quirky to program.
I believe the 6502 could do things faster than the Z80. Right, I was hoping someone might remember specifics. I don't think this is really true, in general. The 6800 is very close to the 6502 Not really.
I loved the 6502. Around that era I programmed the SC/MP, Z80, the 8080 and the 6800. Although the Z80 was more powerful, the 6502 holds a special place in my heart as it was the first CPU I worked with and I loved the simplicity of the instruction set. My crowning achievement was a multi-threaded kernel for a CNC punch. Since the stack was at a fixed memory address and there was no PUSHA, I had to change threads (in…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, if you completely ignore all of the extra circuitry for the on-chip network and cache coherency and everything else you would need. Transistor density is far from the limiting factor in the number of cores we can wedge into a single system.
If you assume that there is no cache (only on-die memory) and that memory is not shared between cores, things become much simpler and scale more linearly. Core-to-core communications and plenty of other details remain to spend man-years ironing out, but it seems like it would be possible to approach 64k cores or at least 16k.
I loved the 6502. Around that era I programmed the SC/MP, Z80, the 8080 and the 6800. Although the Z80 was more powerful, the 6502 holds a special place in my heart as it was the first CPU I worked with and I loved the simplicity of the instruction set. My crowning achievement was a multi-threaded kernel for a CNC punch. Since the stack was at a fixed memory address and there was no PUSHA, I had to change threads (in…
Ditto that. My first programs were in assembly on the 6502, and I'm thrilled to see it getting this attention. I'm just sorry that I don't still have the KIM-1.