Dee and some of the other members of the Bayesian Nakama are celebrating the construction of the first full-fledged computer built entirely out of local, asteroidal resources and processes. The chip design they're using, the 6502, is roughly a century old - but its 3510 transistors can all be laid out manually, and then the design shrank through the best analog photolithography techniques they've been able to figure out so far. A CPU working at a single megahertz may not seem like much - but it's better than the spyware-laden hardware from Earth, or the massively expensive chips manufactured on and imported from Luna, or nothing at all. And now that they've achieved this, they've made a real stride towards bootstrapping themselves to complete technological independence.
From left to right: Zot (anteater), Dee (rat in taur prosthetic), Bongo (wolf), Quux (goat), Bar (donkey).
You sure come up with some interesting scifi. I'm surprised you named a specific chip design. Why did you pick that one? Or for that matter, not have them come up with their own chip design? CPU-fangirling? <3
You sure come up with some interesting scifi. I'm surprised you named a specific chip design. Why di
If I were fangirling, I'd have had them make a 6510 instead - I'm rather fond of the Commodore 64. :)
In this case, though, the 6502 has an interesting design in and of itself. It was drawn out on a roughly meter-square piece of paper by a single individual, who laid out every transistor and group in the optimal location; it is, in a sense, the last CPU fully designed and understandable by a single person.
(Plus, a few years ago, a few people got together, actually looked at a 6502, photographed it, figured out where all the transistors were and how they were connected, and created a virtual model of the whole thing: http://www.visual6502.org/ , which is where Dee and her friends got the design for the poster behind Bongo. :) )
If I were fangirling, I'd have had them make a 6510 instead - I'm rather fond of the Commodore 64. :
