Talk:MOS Technology 6502/Archives/2013

Section Technical description: 3510 transistors, Wikipedia self reference

Right at the beginning of this section it is stated that the 6502 consists of 3510 transistors. Although the number seems sound to me, I wonder where this number comes from. The references cite Wikipedia lemma Transistor count and an web source "teuinsuska2009.files.wordpress.com - ac 03 Standar Integritas Akademik". Has anybody looked into this? It is a PPT presentation in Indonesian(?) language, again citing the article Transistor count of Wikipedia. Looking into the table presented in the WP article, sources are missing. Has anybody better sources and can improve both articles? Otherwise, that number should be removed.

-- Tmfroehlich (talk) 01:31, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

The precision of the number makes it dubious. MOS ICs have various pseudo transistor-like structures so an exact count is not possible. Motorola claims the original 6800 microprocessor had about 4000 transistors and the 6802 had 11,000 transistors. A count of 3500 could be reliable, 3510 is likely a made-up number. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 05:05, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Still confused

The low clock frequency moderated the speed requirement of memory and peripherals attached to the CPU, as only about 50 percent of the clock cycle was available for memory access (due to the asynchronous design, this percentage varied strongly among chip versions). This was critical at a time when affordable memory had access times in the range 250 - 450 ns.

This definitely needs expansion.

For one, the numbers at the end are dropped in without context - what it is about these numbers makes it critical?

And is this "only about 50 percent of the clock cycle was available for memory access" part of the question that I asked earlier about GPUs and CPUs sharing memory?

And is the "due to the asynchronous design" a reference to dynamic logic?

Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:59, 11 November 2013 (UTC)