Examining the silicon dies of the Intel 386 processor
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Re: Examining the silicon dies of the Intel 386 processor
#2Author here. I've been looking at the 386 if anyone has questions. This post was inspired by userbinator's discussion on HN a couple of weeks ago about how many transistors there are in the 386.
Re: Examining the silicon dies of the Intel 386 processor
#3Author here. I've been looking at the 386 if anyone has questions. This post was inspired by userbinator's discussion on HN a couple of weeks ago about how many transistors there are in the 386.
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Re: Examining the silicon dies of the Intel 386 processor
#4Author here. I've been looking at the 386 if anyone has questions. This post was inspired by userbinator's discussion on HN a couple of weeks ago about how many transistors there are in the 386.
Total amateur here: does a 386 have “cleverness” or optimizations or does it just quite literally chug through a stream of instructions, adjusting registers and memory?
I guess by this I am thinking about how newer processors do all kinds of stuff at the microcode level that mean you cannot anticipate precisely what instructions are being executed in what order.
Re: Examining the silicon dies of the Intel 386 processor
#5Could the “C” in 80C386I stand for CMOS? Wasn’t that pattern used for the 80C88, for example?
Re: Examining the silicon dies of the Intel 386 processor
#6Author here. I've been looking at the 386 if anyone has questions. This post was inspired by userbinator's discussion on HN a couple of weeks ago about how many transistors there are in the 386.
Great post. The most interesting thing to me was how historically significant the 386SL turned out to be. I had always mentally slotted it as a cheap cut-down part for the emerging laptop market, but it actually was a relatively sophisticated (3X the transistors!) precursor of the modern SoC.
Re: Examining the silicon dies of the Intel 386 processor
#7Author here. I've been looking at the 386 if anyone has questions. This post was inspired by userbinator's discussion on HN a couple of weeks ago about how many transistors there are in the 386.
Love the post!
Some DOI and Bitsavers links are broken (linking to righto.com or 404s). Also, where can I find "Automatic Place and Route Used on the 80386"? DDG only contains one result: this post.
Re: Examining the silicon dies of the Intel 386 processor
#8Author here. I've been looking at the 386 if anyone has questions. This post was inspired by userbinator's discussion on HN a couple of weeks ago about how many transistors there are in the 386.
About what rough area percentage (or some other metric if you think there's a clearer comparison) of a 386DX is standard cells versus hand layout?
Re: Examining the silicon dies of the Intel 386 processor
#9Author here. I've been looking at the 386 if anyone has questions. This post was inspired by userbinator's discussion on HN a couple of weeks ago about how many transistors there are in the 386.
Total amateur here: does a 386 have “cleverness” or optimizations or does it just quite literally chug through a stream of instructions, adjusting registers and memory? I guess by this I am thinking about how newer processors do all kinds of stuff at the microcode level that mean you cannot anticipate precisely what instructions are being executed in what order.
Out of order execution was introduced in the Pentium Pro, the Pentium was already able to execute two instructions per cycle but was still in-order.
Note that this "magic" is mostly implemented not in microcode, but rather in hardwired logic.
Re: Examining the silicon dies of the Intel 386 processor
#10Author here. I've been looking at the 386 if anyone has questions. This post was inspired by userbinator's discussion on HN a couple of weeks ago about how many transistors there are in the 386.
Every time I see something new on righto.com, I get excited! I get to learn :D
Thank you so much, both for constantly sharing what you know and for preserving what's one of the most interesting times in the evolution of computing.