The Porsche Risc Chip

[Scouser]

Porsche 911 RISC Chip

This is the original mask for the 1982 Berkeley Reduced Instruction Set Computer II (RISC II) chip.

They used the philosophy of the 911: lightweight, fast, small, optimize what you need and don't add anything extra.

This design evolved into the Sun Microsystems Inc. SPARC CPU and was later recognized as one of the most important computer

designs by the IEEE Computer Architecture SIG because it has influenced every CPU designed up to date.

And yes.....I work for Sun Microsystems

[Poursha]

When I was in grad school, a friend of mine was getting his masters in computer science and took a few chip design classes. He had these giant printouts (probably 4' x 6') of his designs on the walls of his room--pretty cool stuff.

Another friend was getting his PhD in nuclear engineering and his thesis was designing a fusion reactor...the mathematical equations went on for 10s of pages...but that's not why you called...

[savetonight]

that's so cool...

[grover]

Semiconductor fab lab- actually making microchips myself in the cleanroom- was probably the best course I took in college. Better even than the optics lab where we played with lasers and made holograms :D

I just find this stuff fascinating!