The Ultimate Acorn Archimedes talk
Posted: 12 Mar 2020, 11:16
I just watched this talk from 36C3 on the design of the Acorn Archimedes computer, and I really enjoyed it. I thought it might be of interest to people on here.
In particular I was fascinated by some of the details of how how the chipset was designed to fit within constraints of pin-count on packages; why the ARM used 26-bit addressing; why it has the load and store multiple instructions; the effect of memory bandwidth on system performance and most of all the emphasis on a "balanced design" of a whole system. As I learn about the Gigatron in more and more detail, I can see that "balance" and designing the whole system not just components is the only thing that makes it work. The computers are very different systems in many respects, but I think they have something in common.
On the CCC website
On YouTube
In particular I was fascinated by some of the details of how how the chipset was designed to fit within constraints of pin-count on packages; why the ARM used 26-bit addressing; why it has the load and store multiple instructions; the effect of memory bandwidth on system performance and most of all the emphasis on a "balanced design" of a whole system. As I learn about the Gigatron in more and more detail, I can see that "balance" and designing the whole system not just components is the only thing that makes it work. The computers are very different systems in many respects, but I think they have something in common.
On the CCC website
On YouTube