Chris.Smith@raytheon.co.uk drunkenly mumbled...
> 
> You aint gonna get 8Mb of full-speed cache on-die in any CPU - however
> hard you dream.  Yield would be so low that you'd have to sell your
> company for every CPU you bought as they'd cost so much (HP do this
> with normal CPUs - $45,000 for a 64-bit piece of slow crap).  They do

heh, come to think of it, i don't think SUN has ever put the cache on the
same piece of ceramic (ah ha!, i can spell it now!!) let alone on the same
die.  it's hard to say since they like to hide everything under those enormous
heatsinks.

> seem to avoid the cache speed discussion on their web site I notice.
> Anyone know what the clock ratio is?  1:1, 2:1 etc?

that's a good question.  if anyone knows, i'd be interested as well.

> [ Intel CPUs in 1969 ]
> 
> Intel did *design* a CPU in 1969 but it wasn't very useful AFAIK.
> I don't think they ever produced one in the end, waiting till the
> 4004 in '71.  I'll dig out some info if I can find what tape it's
> on.

and even then, they didn't make a CPU that was used in what could be classifed
as a computer until 1974 with the 8080, and didn't make a CPU that was truely
mass-produced until 1978 with the 8086/8088, AND didn't figure out 32-bit until
1985.  so they got an early start, but they were sufficiently slow with their
design process that it took them 20 years to catch up.

let's also not forget that SUN didn't start making their own CPUs for a while.
they used Motorola CPUs, and Mototola is older than SUN and Intel put together.

> Now that is nice :)  Better than any system in that department.  No
> more booting up and playing with `live diagnostic' software :P  Thats
> dangerous stuff but fun.

i've got to start mucking with the Netra's at work, i didn't even know they 
could do this (i don't really use them very often).  this is far too cool.
i though the ROM monitor was neat enough, but boy was i wrong.

-brian