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Edmund Berkeley's Simon Relay Processor (madrona.ca)
16 points by userbinator on March 2, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments



The MC14500B processor folks (Usagi, others...) would likely enjoy getting their hands on this. That chip is basically a one bit version of this two bit processor.

A one bit ALU means programs for the 14500 tend to be quite long. I am sure a two bit processor would have shorter programs. I wonder what percentage improvement in program length is reasonable to expect.


I suspect the general rule is that programs expand to use the available bit width, so in practice no savings.

I'm not so sure that holds when you get to this point as everything you're likely to want to do is bigger than that but width.

I'd guess at least half? With a one bit alu you'd need to check the carry flag after every addition.

But that's without digging in and at the moment I can't work out how you'd do anything with a purely 1 bit machine




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