On 12/21/20 8:11 PM, David Gesswein via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 02:17:50PM -0500, Neil Cherry via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I'd love to see more about things like the 4 bit computers and bit slicers. What is a bit slice computer?
"Bit slicing is a technique for constructing a processor from modules of processors of smaller bit width, for the purpose of increasing the word length."
The bit slice I have some knowledge of executed microcode the designer created to implement the instruction set desired or the microcode directly implemented the desired functionality for special hardware. Should be able to find more online.
Most use it for referring to machines using the couple chips intended for this purpose such as the AM290x. I thought it was neat that Tek used the 290x chips in the 4052 to make a faster upgrade of the 4051 which used a 6800. They made a faster 6800 than you could buy as a microprocessor. They also added new floating point instructions since it wasn't as fast as they hoped. https://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/4052
Okay bit processors were CPU construction sets. :-) Thanks for the cool link. I'm still trying wrap my head around the 16 bit 6800 compatible. :-) The Floating point makes a lot of sense but most 6800 instructions were 8 bit (not all) so the 16 bit part and the speed increase over the 1Mhz 6800. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies