I find it a great pity that now that transistors
have become so cheap
(particularly when in ICs), most people don't care how many are used,
and most modern designs use far too many of them.
"Too many" in what sense? :)
To many in the sense that the job can be done with _significant;y_ less.
I am really moaning about the so-called designers who want to use an
embedded PC-type-thing with <n> megs of RAM for a problem that could be
solved with a little hardwired logic (say about 50 transsitors).
It's amazing what could be done with 2 or 3
of the things, but those
clever designs have been mostly forgotten.
Yes...at least in part because they tend to need a pile of other
things, like capacitors and inductors, which are difficult to stick
That is true. I was thinking of perhaps the most elegant design I've ever
had the good fortune to work on -- the HP9100. The 2 main ROMs in that
are inductive (core-on-a-rop, that multi-layer PCB ROM), which could not
be made in a chip. And to make ROMs with similar capacity in a chip would
use a fair numebr of transistors.
-tony