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It's also amazing how much smaller transistors have become since 1978. The 76477 sound chip had about 200 transistors, and now chips have billions of transistor
by kens 6y ago
It's also amazing how much smaller transistors have become since 1978. The 76477 sound chip had about 200 transistors, and now chips have billions of transistors.
- Kirby64 6y agoObviously transistors have gotten way smaller, but it's not entirely fair to compare transistors in a sound chip to something in a microprocessor. Anything that's driving a speaker is going to have pretty large transistors. Additionally the power stage of chips generally takes up some room. It'd be a lot more comparable to compare similar basic sound output chips... I bet they don't have more than a few thousand transistors even today.
- djmips 6y agoAnd yet this chip wasn't designed to drive a speaker. The reference designs I've seen show using external transistors to actually drive the speaker.
- CamperBob2 6y agoThere was the SN76488, if you wanted to drive a (small) speaker directly.