68060 Power

Quadibloc

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Dec 3, 2017, 3:30:52 AM12/3/17

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I had to dig a bit, as the Wikipedia article didn't give a figure - but the 68060
used about 5 watts of power; this varied depending on which clock rate version one
used.

In comparison, the first Pentium used about 15 watts of power - today a small
amount of power, suitable for laptop processors, but back then it prompted
columnists to speak of being able to "fry eggs" on the processor.

The 68060, of course, was a dead end - and its FPU was not pipelined, which badly
limited its performance for number-crunching.

This is in comparison to the original 68000, which used 1.75 watts of power. Quite
different from today's processors, which might use, say, 90 watts.

John Savard

Quadibloc

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Dec 3, 2017, 3:34:39 AM12/3/17

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On Sunday, December 3, 2017 at 1:30:52 AM UTC-7, Quadibloc wrote:

> This is in comparison to the original 68000, which used 1.75 watts of power. Quite
> different from today's processors, which might use, say, 90 watts.

...and the top-end Pentium Pro, at 200 MHz with one megabyte of L2 cache, used 44
watts. This was the one with out-of-order pipelining for the FP unit, thus making
it a modern CPU with a microarchitecture comparable to that of the 360/195.

John Savard

Andreas Kohlbach

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Dec 3, 2017, 4:55:02 PM12/3/17

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On Sun, 3 Dec 2017 00:30:50 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc wrote:
>
> I had to dig a bit, as the Wikipedia article didn't give a figure - but the 68060
> used about 5 watts of power; this varied depending on which clock rate version one
> used.

If the data you dug up is accurate, why not updating Wikipedia?

> In comparison, the first Pentium used about 15 watts of power - today a small
> amount of power, suitable for laptop processors, but back then it prompted
> columnists to speak of being able to "fry eggs" on the processor.
>
> The 68060, of course, was a dead end - and its FPU was not pipelined, which badly
> limited its performance for number-crunching.
>
> This is in comparison to the original 68000, which used 1.75 watts of power. Quite
> different from today's processors, which might use, say, 90 watts.

Would probably also have been a nice CPU for space probes then. A quick
search doesn't say any space probe would had use it though. There might
still be more less power hungry microprocessors...
--
Andreas
You know you are a redneck if
the trunk of your car is tied down and you're not hauling anything.

J. Clarke

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Dec 3, 2017, 8:28:51 PM12/3/17

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Are you talking about then or now? Now, consider that that 90 watts
is for performance that walks all over the most powerful
supercomputers that were contemporary with the initial release of the
68000. Something as simple and slow as the 68000 would be drawing
milliwatts today.

As for space probes, Reagan pretty much killed NASA deep space
operations in the '80s--the only things they got off before the end of
the decade were Magellan and Galileo. The Galileo design was started
well before the 68000 shipped and used 6 1802s and two 16-bit-slice
processors built from AMD2900s, all rad-hard. Magellan pretty much
copied the Galileo design.

Andreas Kohlbach

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Dec 4, 2017, 5:00:31 PM12/4/17

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On Sun, 03 Dec 2017 20:28:49 -0500, J. Clarke wrote:
>
> On Sun, 03 Dec 2017 16:55:01 -0500, Andreas Kohlbach
> <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>
>>Would probably also have been a nice CPU for space probes then. A quick
>>search doesn't say any space probe would had use it though. There might
>>still be more less power hungry microprocessors...
>
> Are you talking about then or now?

Any.

> Now, consider that that 90 watts is for performance that walks all over
> the most powerful supercomputers that were contemporary with the
> initial release of the 68000. Something as simple and slow as the
> 68000 would be drawing milliwatts today.
>
> As for space probes, Reagan pretty much killed NASA deep space
> operations in the '80s--the only things they got off before the end of
> the decade were Magellan and Galileo. The Galileo design was started
> well before the 68000 shipped and used 6 1802s and two 16-bit-slice
> processors built from AMD2900s, all rad-hard. Magellan pretty much
> copied the Galileo design.

I just read that the rover Sojourner they sent to Mars (Pathfinder
Mission) in 1996 had an Intel 80C85 (from 1975). Seems an M68000 was
never an option when it came to space probes. I cannot find when the
design for Pathfinder started. But suppose after the 70s ended, so the
M68000 would had been available.

--
Andreas
You know you are a redneck if

your lifetime goal is to own a fireworks stand.

Peter Flass

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Dec 4, 2017, 5:43:06 PM12/4/17

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OT, but are there any reasonably current systems that use any variant of
the 680x0? I know Freescale makes the chips, minus memory management, for
embedded uses. Was the Mac the last user-level system that used these
chips?

--
Pete

Quadibloc

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Dec 4, 2017, 11:53:14 PM12/4/17

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On Monday, December 4, 2017 at 3:43:06 PM UTC-7, Peter Flass wrote:

> OT, but are there any reasonably current systems that use any variant of
> the 680x0? I know Freescale makes the chips, minus memory management, for
> embedded uses. Was the Mac the last user-level system that used these
> chips?

Pretty much, but the TI-92 calculator with symbolic algebra, and the Palm Pilot,
also used 680x0 chips, and at least the former outlived the Mac.

John Savard

Charles Richmond

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Dec 5, 2017, 1:43:50 AM12/5/17

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On 12/4/2017 4:43 PM, Peter Flass wrote:
>
> [snip...] [snip...] [snip...]

>
> OT, but are there any reasonably current systems that use any variant of
> the 680x0? I know Freescale makes the chips, minus memory management, for
> embedded uses. Was the Mac the last user-level system that used these
> chips?
>

Uh, let's *not* forget the Amiga and the Atari ST.

The Pluto probe New Horizons used MIPS processors... two processors
plus a backup processor for each.

The Spirit and Opportunity mars rovers used Power PC computers, as ISTM
the rover Curiosity did also.

--
numerist at aquaporin4 dot com

Quadibloc

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Dec 5, 2017, 2:32:34 AM12/5/17

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On Monday, December 4, 2017 at 11:43:50 PM UTC-7, Charles Richmond wrote:
> On 12/4/2017 4:43 PM, Peter Flass wrote:
> > Was the Mac the last user-level system that used these
> > chips?

> Uh, let's *not* forget the Amiga and the Atari ST.

I don't think he was forgetting them. Although there are Amiga revivals, those
systems basically disappeared before the Mac changed to the PowerPC.

John Savard

Quadibloc

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Dec 5, 2017, 3:13:07 AM12/5/17

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The Power Mac was introduced in March, 1994.

The Atari ST was abandoned in 1993.

The Amiga 4000, the last model of the Amiga from Commodore, was introduced in
1992, and Commodore went bankrupt in 1994.

So those two systems were around probably until only shortly before the last
680x0 Mac was released.

John Savard

Charles Richmond

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Dec 5, 2017, 3:31:52 AM12/5/17

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I see... there are two ways to interpret Mr. Flass' statement.

1) No user-level system used the 68000 after the Mac chose to use it.

2) No user-level system used the 68000 *after* the Mac dropped the use
of the 68000.

I see I have picked up the tool by the wrong handle...

lars.br...@gmail.com

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Feb 6, 2018, 2:57:49 AM2/6/18

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Peter Flass wrote:
> are there any reasonably current systems that use any variant of
> the 680x0? I know Freescale makes the chips, minus memory management, for
> embedded uses.

Do you include the ColdFire series? I think they're still being made, but
it doesn't look like they're popular any more.

It's not Freescale any more, it's NXP. Or is it Qualcomm?