How many transistors in the 6502 processor? - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

5 May 2001

From: Mike Cheponis &lt;mac(a)Wireless.Com&gt;

Reordered your list by transistor count and added caveats...

...
 From Microprocessor Report, in chronological order:

8008: 3.5K  transistors  14 mm^2 

...
 1802: 5K    transistors  27 mm^2    if 1802 were
done in Nmos it would have been far
   lower transistor count.  As it is CMOS there are
   many cases in the logic where two complmentary
   transistors exist where NMOS would have used
   one.  It is also the ONLY one on the list that was
   fully static logic.  Its registers used a lot of
   transistors as the raw flipflop.

...
 6502: 4K    transistors  21 mm^2 
     fewer transistors and also a clever design
     made for an easy mask that had good yeild
     for the die size.

...
 6800: 4.1K  transistors  16 mm^2
8080: 4.8K  transistors  20 mm^2
8085: 6.5K  transistors  20 mm^2
Z80:  8.5K  transistors  18 mm^2 
...
 6809: 9K    transistors  21 mm^2
Z8001 17.5K transistors  39 mm^2
8086: 29K   transistors  33 mm^2
8088: 29K   transistors  33 mm^2
68000 68K   transistors  44 mm^2 

...
 I really hate to interrupt this group's speculation
with actual data, but
...
 I'm weird in that way. 

Thanks, it's not as if the data was a top secret.

Allison