Every Transistor Becomes a 6502

I ran across some old docs for HP PA-RISC CPUs from ‘94, which were touted as 0.8 micron fabrication. With current 10 nanometer fabrication, that means every transistor in the old CPU could now be replaced by a complete 6502 microprocessor.

A technical tweet from John Carmack jokes that advances in chip fabrication make each transistor in a 1994 HP PA-RISC CPU large enough to be replaced by an entire 6502 microprocessor. The punchline is an absurd comparison between the tiny transistor scale and the much larger, primitive 6502 CPU, appealing to computer history and hardware enthusiasts.

• @ithueti / 1023 2019-06-17