Recently, Somebody Somewhere wrote these words
> This does not mean that it's easy and today's processor designers have
> a lot of analog electronics to deal with...
>
> Another problem is the length of the interconnects between different
> parts of the chip. These are normally long enough to transport several
> clock cycles worth of information at the same time, i.e. you have
> several bits on the same line at the same time, following each other
> at almost the speed of light...
>
I got an insight into this way back in the 80s. I had work servicing on
a production line in Amdahl, who made compatibles to compete with IBMs
large computers.
The clock edges had a length of 4 nS (=125Mhz) at that time. One of the
things I had to do was fix a clockwire machine, as the clockwires were
bonded on the back of the board and there was a 0.1mm length tolerance
in lengths of 15cm. Mind you, they were still trotting out 35 - 38 Mips.
--
With best Regards,
Declan Moriarty.
--
Author: Declan Moriarty
INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fat City Hosting, San Diego, California -- http://www.fatcity.com
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