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This is crazy. Someone managed to run #Linux (v4.4) on an #Intel 4004 #CPU from 1971, one of the first commercially available microprocessors ever. The craziest part: It became possible by writing a #MIPS #R3000 #emulator in 4004 #assembler that fits into the 4096 bytes of addressable memory. The emulator then runs the kernel. My mind is blown. 6 comments
It's not exactly fast though :-P > … the virtual CPU thinks it is running at 1.05MHz. My testing shows that the actual emulated speed of the MIPS guest is around 70Hz at 740KHz. I run the 4004 at 790KHz, so the emulated guest is thus operating at about 74.73Hz. So time for the guest is dilated by 14,030x. This means that **a virtual second is, in real life, around 3h54**. Four hours per virtual second, basically! @data0 Yes, but a 32-bit laptop is quite a bit faster than a 4004 4-bitter from '71 @data0 Looking at FreeBSD still supporting Pentiums... https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/i386/ Like... if it's at all possible to run linux at all on a 4004... there's nothing actually making it unusable on a 32-bit CPU  @data0 thats one way to work around a small address space :picmo_laugh: |
Gregory's Server
@data0 Here's yet another thing for me to send back when someone says "32-bit computers need to be phased out because they can't possibly run modern Linux"