> It's a strange thing also when a "new/old" machine trumpets its speed as a feature "40x faster than the C64!". If I want fast then I'll use my desktop compute

> It's a strange thing also when a "new/old" machine trumpets its speed as a feature "40x faster than the C64!". If I want fast then I'll use my desktop computer. The author of that project has had another goal in mind-- to be able to build usable machines where the code running on them can be reasoned about. There's a talk he gave where he hooked a joystick up to a little cube and had a C64 slideshow with rich text, graphics, and slides that were editable in realtime. Additionally, he had a baseband processor hooked up so he could make and receive calls from some C64 demo-looking app. The interface was so simple between the baseband and the main CPU that a single developer could have a chance at understanding the interface, the code running on the trusted CPU, and the state of the memory when making a call in the app. For that goal, a chip design as well understood as this one is a great starting point. And I believe that's where the "40x" faster comes in-- e.g., that means the slide show with editable rich text plus graphics is actually usable in realtime.