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Ken Shirriff

The 386 was originally scheduled for 50 person-years of development time, but it fell behind schedule. The designers made a risky decision to use "automatic place and route", letting software do some layout. This worked and the chip was completed ahead of schedule. 2/17

3 February at 18:01 | Open on oldbytes.space
4 comments
Ken Shirriff

Early chips had every transistor drawn by hand. Federico Faggin, designer of the popular Z80 processor (1976), spent three weeks drawing transistors but the last few transistors wouldn't fit so he had to erase everything and start over. The result was dense and chaotic. 3/17
3 February at 18:01 | Open on oldbytes.space
Hugh

@kenshirriff is this thread something that will be continuing at a later date? Or maybe a federation issue - I’m only seeing up to 3/17

11 February at 18:34 | Open on techhub.social
Ken Shirriff

@hugh The whole thread is there but sometimes people have trouble seeing all of my threads.

17 February at 18:21 | Open on oldbytes.space
Hugh

@kenshirriff weird. Will see if I can get at it if I’m not logged in, or maybe just on the web. Thanks

17 February at 19:01 | Open on techhub.social
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