Re: 65020 CPU? Look this...

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

Peter de Vroomen wrote:

<snip>

> I still think 8 bit processors have their own right of existence. They are
> much easier to program the right way, because their instruction set is
> simple and to the point. But somebody should make an 8-bit processor with
> the speed of a few Ghz :).

I agree.

But since one of the major attractive characteristics of 8-bit
processors is their deterministic execution times, it is very
unlikely that speeds like this could be reached using current
technology.

Processor speeds over 100MHz invariably require pipelined
execution (of a complex, not simple variety) and caches,
which almost guarantee the loss of simple timing determinism.

I suppose one could always put the machine into a "lockstep"
mode when timing determinism was required, with every memory
access treated as a cache miss and every conditional branch
treated as a pipeline flush, but that would be _much_ slower.

-michael

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