>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/28/megaprocessor_hand_built_cpu_centre_computing_history/
>
> <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/28/megaprocessor_hand_built_cpu_centre_computing_history/>
>
> Half-ton handbuilt CPU heads to Centre for Computing History
> 1,000,000 hand-soldered joints, £40k spent, just about fits in one lorry
>
>
> A 42,000-transistor CPU weighing half a ton and built by hand from full-sized
> components has been installed at the Centre for Computing History in
> Cambridge, England.
>
> James Newman’s Megaprocessor, a super-sized CPU big enough to walk through,
> was born as a result of a 2012 work discussion.
>
> "There was a conversation at work about that time when we were talking about
> debugging something and someone remarked it would be easier if we had an LED
> on a signal," he explained to The Register in 2015
> <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/23/brit_mega_processor/>.
>
> Speaking to the Centre for Computing History last week, Newman added: “This
> all started with me wanting to learn about transistors. Things got out of
> hand!”
>
> His ultimate goal other than the pure satisfaction of building the thing and
> getting it running, as El Reg reported in June this year
> <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/24/bloke_finishes_handbuilt_cpu/>, was
> to show the public how computers work by blowing the CPU up to a
> human-viewable scale. To do this he used modern transistors and LEDs – 42,300
> of the former and 10,548 of the latter – all hand-soldered into place. The
> LEDs help visually trace the paths of data through the giant processor.
>
>
>
> The processor itself uses 15,300 of the transistors, though Newman notes that
> “a fair proportion of these are used to drive the LEDs”, of which 8,500 are
> connected to the core. The core itself occupies a whopping 15 square metres,
> which compares slightly unfavourably to the 33mm2 of Intel’s venerable 8086.
>
> RAM and programmable ROM both weigh in at 256 bytes each, while the 500W
> power draw is mostly down to the juice needed to light the LEDs.
>
> As for clock speed, Newman reckons it’s somewhere around 20kHz. Folk wanting
> to write programs for it can check out the documentation on the official
> Megaprocessor website <http://megaprocessor.com/programming.html>.
>
> His matter-of-fact page on faults and problems he encountered during the four
> years it took to construct and solder the Megaprocessor is here
> <http://megaprocessor.com/GBU_build_faults.html>, including a mystery problem
> later traced to Henry the Hoover. ®
>
> Sponsored: Customer Identity and Access Management
> <http://go.theregister.com/tl/1666/-5288/-?td=wptl1666bt>
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