• Buffalox@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    In broad terms, that seems to put it about on par with an Intel 386 chip from 1985

    At 24 MHz, it’s actually about 4-6 times faster than a full fledged 33 MHz i80386DX with 10 times as many transistors back in the day.
    It’s absolutely insane that i386 remained the standard with its inferior high latency design.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes

    exhibiting BASIC language performance ten times faster than a newly introduced 80386-based computer

    That was an 8MHz Arm system, and it was commonly recognized as being clearly faster than a 33MHz i80386DX!
    In fact the 8036 was so inefficient at 33MHz it couldn’t even beat the speed of a 16 MHz 80286 on 16 bit code!!
    Mips, Alpha, Motorola, Sparc and finally Arm were all better, but they weren’t backed by IBM, and the availability of clones made the PC relatively cheap. But basically everything else was better than Intel.

    Unfortunately Arm also lacked a math co-processor, so for tasks that were heavy on FP calculations, an i386 with co-processor was superior.
    Also Arm was unable to sell them cheap enough to capture at least a niche market. (Apart from education in UK)
    And for the hobbyist an Amiga was way cheaper, and had powerful graphics and sound chips.

    • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      Now you got me remembering my 2MHz “big board” Z80 computer I put together in the 80s from a kit. First computer I ever owned. On first power-up nothing seemed to happen, then I turned up the monitor brightness and a choir of angels sang.

  • A_A@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    Package options : 20-pin, 16-pin or 8-pin … but looking at Texas instrument website i did not find the pinout …

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      2 hours ago

      Same way you would in any other microcontroller application, but smaller, so the whole device can be smaller.

      Get small enough and we can really have those bloodstream robots.

    • Beacon@fedia.io
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      1 hour ago

      In any use where size and or weight is important. For example wearables and flying drones

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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      1 hour ago

      In small things. Probably not very feasible for hobby projects unless you can get it soldered on when the PCB is built.

      • MartianSands
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        28 minutes ago

        BGA, like in the photo, isn’t the only option. There are options only slightly larger with hand-solderable packages (if you’re good at soldering)