Chip Letter Links No. 8: The Photomask, CHIPS for America, Megaprocessor, Compiler Explorer, Z80 Secrets And More
Great links, reading and images for 11 November 2022
Hi everyone and thanks for subscribing. This is one of a regular series of posts with links, images and articles of interest, inspired by Adam Tooze’s excellent Chartbook.
Each edition starts with a beautiful die image. This week we have a DEC Alpha 21066-AA courtesy of Martijn Boer.
After a break last week I’m trialling moving the weekly links post to Friday. Let me know what you think.
On the topic of Adam Tooze, I wrote a short post recently on how he manages to be productive. No chips but may be of interest to anyone who writes extensively.
Asianometry
First this week, a big thank you to Jon Y from Asianometry for adding The Chip Letter to his list of recommendations. I love Jon’s videos which are both entertaining and insightful. I’m also slightly in awe of the rate at which Jon produces his videos!
I particularly enjoyed the recent video on the history of the photomask. Very highly recommended.
Chips for America
On a vital and current topic, a series of Webinars and presentations on the CHIPS for America from the National Institute for Standards and Technology.
Link to the webinars here and the full NIST strategy paper is available here.
Megaprocessor
We featured the ‘Gigatron’, a 6502 made out of discrete components in Chip Letter Links No. 6. A similar idea but on a bigger scale is the ‘Megaprocessor’ a processor built out of discrete components but which this time fills a room.
Built by James Newman and finished in 2016, it has 42,370 discrete transistors and holds the world record for the largest functional ‘microprocessor’ (not sure this term really applies here though!) model.
Every transistor has an associated LED so it’s possible to see the internal workings of the processor as it runs.
As a bonus here is the Computerphile walkthrough of the Megaprocessor.
Link to the megaprocessor website here.
A Complete History of Mainframe Computing
A terrific and relatively concise history from Harvard Mark 1 to System z/10 by way of ENIAC, UNIVAC and System/360.
Not quite complete as it was written in 2009 and there are a few obvious - and significant - quibbles. The PDP-8 really, really wasn’t a mainframe and the list omits anything from outside the US.
A good read nonetheless. Link here.
Compiler Explorer
You may be familiar with ‘Compiler Explorer’ the online tool from Matt Godbolt that allows you to see the assembly output generated
Did you know that it supports a wide range of architectures including Arm, PowerPC, MIPS, RISC-V and even the venerable 6502.
Here is an example of a project for the Nintendo Entertainment System being compiled to generate 6502 assembly code.
Link to the NES project is here.
65 Reasons to Celebrate the 6502 - Remixed
‘In case you missed it’: my post on the 6502 from a couple of weeks ago.
Reasons of space meant that I was limited in the number of images that could be included (otherwise emails truncate which is not ideal). I intend to add lots more images and useful information (and maybe some more reasons to celebrate!).
I’ll post alerts on Twitter when I do so.
(PS Did anyone spot the Beatles tracks in the post?)
Z80: The Last Secrets
In case Z80 enthusiasts feel left out by all the 6502 coverage in recent weeks there was a fascinating talk from FOSDEM 2022 about secrets of the Z80 processor being discovered more than 40 years after its introduction.
Link here.
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