4 May
2001
4 May
'01
2:50 a.m.
With hindsight one can consider the 6502 to be the only 8-bit RISC CPU
It had a reduced number of registers compared with the 6800 and this and
other logic-reduction simplified the design so it could execute code a lot
more efficiently as compared with the 6800. Also the 256-bytes Zero-page
could be regarded as an (extended) RISC-like registerset of the CPU.
I remember a magazine (BYTE?) describe the 6502 as a true RISC-chip
but I don't thing the designers had RISC-CISC philosofies in their heads
while working it out.
Only 6809 bas a "better" chip but that should have been a true 16-bit design
It came way to late to make a large impact. Only the COCO used it in a
homecomputer.
Sipke de Wal
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----- Original Message -----
From: ajp166 <ajp166(a)bellatlantic.net>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Friday, May 04, 2001 1:03 PM
Subject: Re: How many transistors in the 6502 processor?
From: Brian Chase <bdc(a)world.std.com>
Does anyone know how many transistors made up the
6502? These days with
Intel's boasting of the number of transistors their latest processors
use,
it'd be interesting to know what we used to
get by using. What, it
can't
have been more than a few thousand, right?
Memory says it was one of the lower transistor count cpus, very efficient
design.
And then it'd be rather fun to implement your
very own 6502 using 74*
series logic chips.
I'd bet it would be fairly high chip count. IT would be interesting to
see how fast
you cound make it go.
Allison