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Sandia National Labs SA3000 8085 CPU

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Re: Sandia National Labs SA3000 8085 CPU

#31

Post by dahart »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #29
dahart wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side, the fact that those processors were enough to steer spacecraft make me feel like there’s also a decent amount of remarkable wtf in how much compute we have now and how little we get out of each instruction on average compared to what people were doing with these z80 equivalents.

When you don't have the overhead of an operating system with decades of backward compatibility cruft, a scheduler, a virtual memory controller, and a file system you can accomplish amazing things with simple processors. Bare metal is something I'd encourage every programmer to try.

Yeah exactly, we now have so many layers of stuff. On top of vmem & OS, add high def displays, and today’s corporate firewall and malware scanning. I wouldn’t be surprised if just booting my Win 11 laptop, logging in, and launching Teams uses more compute than the entire Galileo mission used over its entire 8 year run. :P

Even without the layers & cruft though, the raw perf is astounding to those of us who remember 8 bit 1Mhz microprocessors. Today’s gamers are used to double-digit teraflops(!) of compute, just to render all the pixels for Minecraft or Fortnite.

I don’t know if there’s a better way these days, but for me Arduino has been an easy & super fun way to futz with a tiny bare metal microprocessor.

Re: Sandia National Labs SA3000 8085 CPU

#32

Post by palmotea »

> Back in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s Sandia National Laboratory (in Albuquerque NM USA) began building the capacity to design, fab, and test IC’s at scale (packaging was handled by Fairchild and Allied Signal).

We need more of this kind of thing, generally: government agencies building up in-house technical capability, instead of outsourcing everything to contractors.

For instance: there should be a government-controlled pharmaceutical manufacturer of last resort. The clear benefits would be to provide extra capacity and prevent things like Martin Shkreli's scams with Retrophin/Turing Pharmaceuticals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli#Thiola_price_hi...).

Re: Sandia National Labs SA3000 8085 CPU

#33

Post by rbanffy »

palmotea wrote: post #32

> Back in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s Sandia National Laboratory (in Albuquerque NM USA) began building the capacity to design, fab, and test IC’s at scale (packaging was handled by Fairchild and Allied Signal). We need more of this kind of thing, generally: government agencies building up in-house technical capability, instead of outsourcing everything to contractors. For instance: there should be a government-…

> instead of outsourcing everything to contractors.

But then how will politicians favor their campaign donors?

Re: Sandia National Labs SA3000 8085 CPU

#34

Post by switchbak »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #26
kjs3 wrote: post #5

Interesting combination of 'remarkable' and 'wtf' that we fling nuclear weapons around with the computational equivalent of a couple of TRS-80s[1]. I can only imagine the sighs of relief from the devs when things like the MIL-STD-1750a and later rad-hard SPARC and PPC variants came along. [1] yes...I know the TRS-80 had a z80, not an 8085. Close enough.

Even hypersonic weapons with precision terminal guidance use truly ancient CPUs. Physics limits of molecular materials places a very low upper bound on the amount of compute required. The rate at which an object in the physical world can alter its trajectory is ultimately limited by the strength of molecular bonds in the material it is made from. Exceed that limit and the object will disintegrate. This upper bound is…

I imagine you're correct about course correction speed, although I'd also expect that the materials and their properties are quite classified at present.

I would also imagine that there could be processing necessary that is mostly unrelated to manoeuvering speed (inlet/control surface management, etc). Perhaps some hypersonic experts could weigh in and let us know :)

Re: Sandia National Labs SA3000 8085 CPU

#35

Post by Zenst »

phire wrote: post #23
Zenst wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That number was probably shaped by minimum production-run requirements, alongside the need for software development units, along with other factors, like the use in Trident II and other quests we may not know about.

There isn't really a minimum production run for silicon chips, they do small test runs all the time to test new designs. At least not from a practical perspective. From an economic perspective, stopping after a single small run is just wasteful. The upfront design costs are so high, and the per wafer costs are so slow that you might as well make a lot extra. Maybe you can find a use for them, or sell them to someone…

Trident 2 (article says used 8 of these chips), and google says around 400-424 made, so easily would have soaked up 4000 of these CPUs with spares alone. So if anything, the production run seems light.

I read they had their own fab, so the minimum production run aspect would appear moot.

Re: Sandia National Labs SA3000 8085 CPU

#36

Post by jfkfif »

palmotea wrote: post #32

> Back in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s Sandia National Laboratory (in Albuquerque NM USA) began building the capacity to design, fab, and test IC’s at scale (packaging was handled by Fairchild and Allied Signal). We need more of this kind of thing, generally: government agencies building up in-house technical capability, instead of outsourcing everything to contractors. For instance: there should be a government-…

Sandia is operated by a government contractor (Honeywell)

Re: Sandia National Labs SA3000 8085 CPU

#37

Post by [deleted] »

rbanffy wrote: post #33
palmotea wrote: post #32

> Back in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s Sandia National Laboratory (in Albuquerque NM USA) began building the capacity to design, fab, and test IC’s at scale (packaging was handled by Fairchild and Allied Signal). We need more of this kind of thing, generally: government agencies building up in-house technical capability, instead of outsourcing everything to contractors. For instance: there should be a government-…

> instead of outsourcing everything to contractors. But then how will politicians favor their campaign donors?

[deleted]

Re: Sandia National Labs SA3000 8085 CPU

#38

Post by Ccecil »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #29
dahart wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side, the fact that those processors were enough to steer spacecraft make me feel like there’s also a decent amount of remarkable wtf in how much compute we have now and how little we get out of each instruction on average compared to what people were doing with these z80 equivalents.

When you don't have the overhead of an operating system with decades of backward compatibility cruft, a scheduler, a virtual memory controller, and a file system you can accomplish amazing things with simple processors. Bare metal is something I'd encourage every programmer to try.

I actually have a 8085 Primer Trainer that I built/used in the 90s for school. [1] Programmed with pushbuttons and 7 segment LEDs. No backup memory so if you shut it off it lost it's program and you had to start over.

Not a programmer by trade, I prefer hardware...had no idea until recently how valuable the training was. We learned BASIC and 8085 machine code as well as building logic circuits from discrete parts. Then I used basically no code myself for 15 years until I learned Arduino. Knowing the basics certainly helped me know what was going on. From there it was just syntax for languages.

[1] https://flic.kr/p/2mkG7gC

Re: Sandia National Labs SA3000 8085 CPU

#39

Post by ErroneousBosh »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #16
haunter wrote: post #2

And if you are curious about the modern radiation hardened CPUs then the current state of the art ones are the MOOG BRE440 [0] and the BAE RAD5500 [1], 5545 [2] being the highest performance multi core one. Even more interesting that they both use the IBM POWER architecture! 0, https://www.moog.com/products/avionics/spacecraft-avionics/b... 1, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD5500 2, https://web.archive.org/web/20190…

what scale of radiation do such hardened designs target?

Expanding a wee bit on what the other guy said, that's typically 20Gy *one Gray at a time*.

A whole body exposure of 5Gy would kill you, although it would happen over two weeks.

10kGy? Spectacularly fatal.

Re: Sandia National Labs SA3000 8085 CPU

#40

Post by ErroneousBosh »

kjs3 wrote: post #5

Interesting combination of 'remarkable' and 'wtf' that we fling nuclear weapons around with the computational equivalent of a couple of TRS-80s[1]. I can only imagine the sighs of relief from the devs when things like the MIL-STD-1750a and later rad-hard SPARC and PPC variants came along. [1] yes...I know the TRS-80 had a z80, not an 8085. Close enough.

> [1] yes...I know the TRS-80 had a z80, not an 8085. Close enough.

Clearly you meant the TRS-80 Model 100.

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