Monster 6502

[Brent Hilpert]

Fewer transistors, hence less die space.

Same reason DRAM is more dense (hence larger) than SRAM.


On 2016-May-28, at 7:12 PM, drlegendre . wrote:

> So what's the reasoning behind using gate capacitance (or inductance) to
> store the bit state? It would seem obvious that setting a bi-stable hi or
> lo would be a much more reliable method of saving the state.
> 
> Is it a matter of power consumption, or switching speed, or both?
> 
> On Sat, May 28, 2016 at 8:49 PM, Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> wrote:
> 
>> On 2016-May-28, at 6:22 PM, drlegendre . wrote:
>>> 
>>> Could someone also clarify what is meant by "gates" in this sense? Are we
>>> talking about the gates (G) of a FET, as in Gate, Drain and Source - or
>> are
>>> we referring to the composite logic gates (NAND, etc.), built up of
>>> multiple bipolar - or MOS - transistors?
>> 
>> Yes, they're talking FET gates, the internal registers would operate under
>> the same basic principle as DRAM does.
>> 
>> Other early microprocs used dynamic registers, I forget which, perhaps
>> others can list them.
>> 
>> Far from the first time a processor had dynamic registers.
>> I've been told that the IBM 709 used inductive (rather than capacitive)
>> storage for the main registers.