5 ms·

I don't recall the COGs for the ST (they held this stuff pretty close), but in 1985, the 68000 CPU couldn't have been more than $50, probably less. Almost certa

by kabdib 11y ago

I don't recall the COGs for the ST (they held this stuff pretty close), but in 1985, the 68000 CPU couldn't have been more than $50, probably less. Almost certainly much less because the Tramiels were absolute wizards at making deals.

bryanlarsen 11y ago
1985 was 6 years after the 68K was reduced. By Moore's law, the cost of manufacturing should have been about 1/16th of what it was in 1979, so the volume price was probably around 1/16th of introduction as well.
- kabdib 11y ago
  Remember that everything on the ST was being costed in early or mid 1984, about a year before the ST shipped. (Which in retrospect was an amazingly compressed schedule...) I think that the National 32032 would have beaten the 68K in cost; National was pretty hungry and willing to make good deals. But their chips were rather extremely very buggy (which the Tramiels may not have cared about, since making software engineers suffer was part of their model), but it was a relatively poor performer, clock-for-clock, and that made the hardware engineers go "ewwww" and after a while we software guys realized that National wasn't being invited over for meetings any more.
yuhong 11y ago
At this point the 68010 had been available for a long time and the 68020 was just released. These still had no MMU but had much better bus error handling than the 68000. In retrospect, it was probably trivial to do 68000/68010 versions of the same CPU by just changing the microcode.
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  The 68010 and the 68020 both had (external) MMUs available. In those days, the MMU and FPU were almost always separate chips (I can't think of any exceptions, though there might have been some). Granted, the one for the 68010 sucked pretty bad.
  - yuhong 11y ago
    Yes, this is exactly what I mean. There was Motorola's own MMUs, but custom MMUs based on discrete logic was also common.

by kabdib 11y ago

bryanlarsen 11y ago

1985 was 6 years after the 68K was reduced. By Moore's law, the cost of manufacturing should have been about 1/16th of what it was in 1979, so the volume price was probably around 1/16th of introduction as well.

kabdib 11y ago
Remember that everything on the ST was being costed in early or mid 1984, about a year before the ST shipped. (Which in retrospect was an amazingly compressed schedule...) I think that the National 32032 would have beaten the 68K in cost; National was pretty hungry and willing to make good deals. But their chips were rather extremely very buggy (which the Tramiels may not have cared about, since making software engineers suffer was part of their model), but it was a relatively poor performer, clock-for-clock, and that made the hardware engineers go "ewwww" and after a while we software guys realized that National wasn't being invited over for meetings any more.

yuhong 11y ago

At this point the 68010 had been available for a long time and the 68020 was just released. These still had no MMU but had much better bus error handling than the 68000. In retrospect, it was probably trivial to do 68000/68010 versions of the same CPU by just changing the microcode.

Turing_Machine 11y ago
The 68010 and the 68020 both had (external) MMUs available. In those days, the MMU and FPU were almost always separate chips (I can't think of any exceptions, though there might have been some). Granted, the one for the 68010 sucked pretty bad.
- yuhong 11y ago
  Yes, this is exactly what I mean. There was Motorola's own MMUs, but custom MMUs based on discrete logic was also common.