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15 300 transistors classiques (+ 27 000 pour la mémoire vive), 3 kg d’alliage de soudure étain-plomb, un peu de temps (comptez quelques années au minimum…) et de l’espace (au moins 15 m2), et vous disposerez d’un “micro” processeur 16 bits (cadencé à 20 kHz), pour la modeste somme d’environ 40 000 livres, soit 73 000 dollars. Pour référence, un Pentium P5 (1993) arrivait à caser 3 millions de transistors sur un carré de 1,7 cm de large… et un SPARC M7 d’aujourd’hui contient pas moins de 4 133 millions de transistors.
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Take 15,300 conventional transistors (+ 27,000 for RAM), 3 kg of tin-lead solder alloy, a few years’ time and a little bit of space (at least 15 m2), and what do you get? Nothing less than a 16-bit “micro” processor (clock speed 20 kHz), all for the low, low price of £40,000, or $73,000. For comparison’s sake, a 1993 Pentium P5 packed 3 million transistors on a 1.7-cm square… and today’s SPARC M7 holds no less than 4,133 million transistors. James Newman, its creator, announced that the soldering was mostly done and that his masterpiece was almost complete. His worst nightmare? A burnt-out transistor: how do you find the culprit among tens of thousands of identical pieces?
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