Hi
> On Jan 16, 2016, at 3:00 AM, Hal Murray <hmur...@megapathdsl.net> wrote: > > > kb...@n1k.org said: >> The astonishing part of this “new world” is that a very complex chip that is >> made in high volume is cheaper than a handful of less popular (but far less >> complex) chips. > > It would be interesting to see the die sizes. Unlike the world of lithography, the dicing process has not made a lot of progress. Decades ago a 1mm x 1 mm die was about as small as you could get. From what I can see that has not dropped by more than a factor of two in 40 years (if at all). Yes, there’s a lot more to it than just a dicing saw. Things like bond wire attach also figure in. It still takes a certain size bond wire to carry a practical amount of current … The net result *could* be a process that does a gate or function in < 1% of the available area. Everything else is just empty space along for the ride (or to provide attach points). Bob > > Another advantage of the CPU solution is that you can make a large class of > changes by just tweaking the software. For example changing the input from > 10 MHz to 5 MHz or 1 MHz. That's also a disadvantage - somebody has to write > the software. > > Adding software to a project adds another layer of management problems. If > the software is really simple that's not much of a problem, you write it once > and debug it and then you don't have to fix any bugs. But software easily > gets complicated which means bugs, and hardware guys are often poor at > software engineering and/or project management when software is involved. > (Software geeks are usually bad at it too.) > > > > -- > These are my opinions. I hate spam. > > > > _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com > To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > and follow the instructions there. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.