aglew@mcdurb.Urbana.Gould.COM (03/17/89)
>In *1982*, HP presented (at ISSCC) a 32bit CPU with >450K transistors. It was fabbed in a 1.3um NMOS process. Yield was >microscopic at the time of the paper, but soon came up to quite >good levels. It was the CPU for the HP 9000 series 500, which >I think we still sell. I remember HP engineers coming round and giving our EE Department blurbs on the chip, saying things like "a complicated instruction set facilitates HLL programming and promotes performance". RISC was relatively new, but I almost choked. I remember thinking "I wish I had that many devices for a *good* architecture".