31 Jan
2018
31 Jan
'18
4:26 p.m.
On Jan 31, 2018, at 7:20 PM, Mark Linimon via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 10:00:53AM -0800, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
Then again, DEC Western Research Lab in the mid 1980s did an interesting project to do a
full custom single ECL chip implementation of a MIPS (or Alpha?) CPU, intended to run at 1
GHz. The CAD system they built for this was quite interesting, as were bits of key
technology like a heat pipe based chip cooling setup, possibly the first such device. It
wasn't finished (the ECL fab shops kept going out of business faster than the CAD team
could tweak the design rules in the tools) but some neat stuff came out of it, in internal
reports only unfortunately.
paul
An all-ECL redesign (details escape me) resulted
in no appreciable
improvement in performance.
But I'm sure the local power company appreciated the extra revenue they
got from it.
(I recently donated the little chunk of ECL logic I had back to Rice
University, where it came from lo those many years ago. Even by the
time they were building their "fast" computer in 1970, 74S was already
starting to catch up.)