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by twtw 2709 days ago
I would have appreciated some historical context for the z80 in this post. 8,500 transistors (equiv to ~2800 nand gates in depletion-load nmos logic * ) and not really designed to be a compiler target. I'd say the z80 is pretty impressive - but certainly with quirks.

I would have enjoyed that kind of framing much more than "lol the z80 sux!"

* Not saying the z80 was implemented with all nand, just providing the figure as a reference.

1 comments

While that's 100% true and Z-80's design has a legacy explanation, HOWEVER freed of the legacy requirement, there's no technical reasons why Zilog couldn't have created a much better compiler target.