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Apollo On 130nm?

John Heritage

Posts 111
19 Nov 2016 10:29


Just curious.  How big would an Apollo die be very roughly if it were fabbed on a process like 130nm* and how fast might it run clock wise?  Any way to guess?

*130nm is usually considered the last fab node before Dennard scaling really slowed down. 


Thierry Atheist

Posts 644
19 Nov 2016 12:09


Here is a list of CPUs made at 130nm
EXTERNAL LINK 

Here's one we may be interested in:
EXTERNAL LINK 

2 GHz!!!!


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
19 Nov 2016 13:19


All this is speculation as we have no ASIC.

But technically Apollo 68080 and VIA Centaur do share a lot in the internal design. So many things are done quite similar in both.

The VIA in 130 nm scaled to 1.2 GHz.


John Heritage

Posts 111
21 Nov 2016 02:49


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

  All this is speculation as we have no ASIC.
 
  But technically Apollo 68080 and VIA Centaur do share a lot in the internal design. So many things are done quite similar in both.
 
  The VIA in 130 nm scaled to 1.2 GHz.
 

 
  Quite a reasonable frequency then potentially.  I often wonder if it would be possible to get a low run chip at an older fab like 130-180nm by sharing masks and wafers with other low volume chips with similar needs to reduce costs of an ASIC even further than usual.
 
  Anyway i was just curious on the speed, potentially 8-10x the FPGA then - Thanks Gunnar! 

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