21 Aug
2001
21 Aug
'01
2:05 p.m.
On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Adrian Vickers wrote:
How hot do Z80s get under normal operation? Would you be able to
overclock them using heatsinks without fans? That would simplify things a
bit.
This leads to
one mind-boggling possibility. If one etches custom boards
with eight Z80s each, and pumps all eight each clock, and one takes
several thousand of these boards, wouldn't that be a rather interesting
MPP supercomputer? Would it be more or less money than one made with,
say, IBM POWER4s, or Alphas, or StrongARMs?
Heh! I like it... The chips would be cheaper in bulk as well, and with a
bit of heatsinking it should be possible to overclock them somewhat. Mind you, even with discounts you're looking at
twenty grand just to sort
out your processor farm; and you still need the i/o logic...
Yes, but how fast a computer would you get for $20,000? Would it be
faster than other machines at that price? I don't think the I/O would be
a big deal. You could use off-the-shelf components to do it.
Still, 8000 Z80s running at 4MHz could theoretically
yield the equivalent
of 1 Z80 running at 32GHz.
That's assuming that the task you're running can be parallelized to that
degree. And plus, if you were to run each of these hypothetical 8-Z80
boards as a single CPU, you would have a 64-bit system.
Peace... Sridhar
Would Manic Miner be playable at that speed? ;)
Cheers!
Ade.
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