[letlambda]

Which leads to my favorite way to think about it. One foot per clock tick of a 1Ghz processor.

[stephengillie]

Does this mean circuits in a 1 GHz processor can't be longer than 12 inches?

[todd8]

No information can travel more than a foot (11.8 inches) in a nanosecond. Grace Hopper used to give a talk where she held up a piece of wire that was that long to illustrate this limitation. [1]

The first Cray computers were designed in a cylindrical shape to keep the signal wires short. [2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEpsKnWZrJ8

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-1

[linker3000]

'twas an annular shape!

Ok..the backplane was annular