[sci.electronics] Cheap microprocessor

sergei@sel.hep.upenn.edu (Sergei Borodin) (04/25/91)

Article 20627 of sci.electronics:
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From: asd@cbnewsj.att.com (Adam S. Denton)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: microprocessor wanted
Message-ID: <1991Apr24.174217.14901@cbnewsj.att.com>
Date: 24 Apr 91 17:42:17 GMT
References: <119279@unix.cis.pitt.edu> <1991Apr24.154831.9757@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: AT&T
Lines: 23

>In article <119279@unix.cis.pitt.edu> fmgst@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Filip Gieszczykiewicz) writes:
>>	o	BUILT-IN floating processor (that's the problem)
>>	o	CHEAP (under $40)

>I would hazard you'll never get it in one chip that cheap until
>ten years from now. :-).  However, if you are diligent, you can
>get by with two chips.  Motorola used to make
>a "floating point ROM" - I believe MC6839 - which interfaced with
>the 6800 family.  Basically, it was floating point emulation in
>ROM, already coded and debugged for you.  You can get the source
>from their BBS too.  Then you wouldn't have to code up floating point
>(which sounds about as exhilarating as watching paint dry :-).
>Although it'll take more chips, you'll have more spendable dollars too...
>6800s are cheep cheep cheep.  And you can burn some EPROMs with code from
>the BBS.  If you're truly a nut, you could run all the 6800s off of one
>EPROM simultaneously -- sorta a SIMD architecture...naaaa, wouldn't work....

What about transputers chip T800 from Inmos - with on-chip FPP
i believe no more  than $100. But it can be easily connected to
similar transputer and system become multiprocessor. Also
simplest possible interface to memory reduces cost of the whole
system. So if you calculate price/performance ratio transputer
system will win.

            Sergei Borodin.
            sergei@upenn5.hep.upenn.edu