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+-   Building a 32-bit One Instruction Computer on Wednesday November 18, @11:18PM Hugh Pickens

Submitted by Hugh Pickens on Wednesday November 18, @11:18PM
programming
Hugh Pickens writes "The advantages of RISC are well known — simplifying the CPU core by reducing the complexity of the instruction set allows faster speeds, more registers, and pipelining to provide the appearance of single cycle execution. Al Williams writes in Dr Dobbs about taking RISC to it's logical conclusion by designing a functional computer called One-Der with only a single simple instruction — a 32-bit Transfer Triggered Architecture (TTA) CPU that operates at roughly 10 MIPS. "When I tell this story in person, people are usually squirming with the inevitable question: What's the one instruction?" writes Williams. "It turns out there's several ways to construct a single instruction CPU, but the method I had stumbled on does everything via a move instruction (hence the name, "Transfer Triggered Architecture")." The CPU is implemented on a a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) device and the prototype works on a "Spartan 3 Starter Board" with an XS3C1000 device available from Digilent that has the equivalent of about 1,000,000 logic gates costing between $100 and $200. "Applications that can benefit from custom instruction in hardware — things like digital signal processing, for example — are ideal for One-Der since you can implement parts of your algorithm in hardware and then easily integrate those parts with the CPU.""
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+-   Intel allows release of full 4004 chip-set details-> on Sunday November 15, @11:44PM mcpublic

Submitted by mcpublic on Sunday November 15, @11:44PM
intel
mcpublic writes "When a small team of reverse engineers receives the blessing of a big corporate legal department, it is cause for celebration. For the 38th anniversary of Intel's groundbreaking 4004 microprocessor, the company is allowing us to release new details of their historic MCS-4 chip family announced on November 15, 1971. For the first time, the complete set of schematics and artwork for the 4001 ROM, 4002 RAM, 4003 I/O Expander, and 4004 Microprocessor is available to teachers, students, historians, and other non-commercial users. To their credit, the Intel Corporate Archives gave us access to the original 4004 schematics, along with the 4002, 4003, and 4004 mask proofs, but the rest of the schematics and the elusive 4001 masks were lost until just weeks ago when Lajos Kintli finished reverse-engineering the 4001 ROM from photomicrographs and improving the circuit-extraction software that helped him draw and verify the missing schematics. His interactive software can simulate an ensemble of 400x chips, and even lets you trace a wire or click on a transistor in the chip artwork window and see exactly where it is on the circuit diagram (and vice-versa)."
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