News Intel's 50-Year-Old 4040 CPU Optimized, Battles ENIAC in Pi-2035 Calculation Race

[Admin]

Intel’s ancient 4040 CPU was tasked with beating the even older ENIAC in a race to calculate Pi-2035. It only managed to win by a whisker after some serious optimization.

Intel's 50-Year-Old 4040 CPU Optimized, Battles ENIAC in Pi-2035 Calculation Race : Read more

 

[MeeLee]

So, how quick could the chip calculate pi, with frequency limitation removed?

 

[Rob1C]

"How many digits of pi would we need to calculate the circumference of a circle with a radius of 46 billion light years to an accuracy equal to the diameter of a hydrogen atom, the simplest atom?

It turns out that 37 decimal places (38 digits, including the number 3 to the left of the decimal point) would be quite sufficient."

Source: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/2016/3/16/how-many-decimals-of-pi-do-we-really-need

 

[purpleduggy]

i wish these old chips could be made at 4nm node. imagine a 486DX4 (yes i know its much newer than the chip in the article) but made at 4nm node. I bet it would use almost zero power, but allow us to run all the legacy OS and applications and games at a fraction of the power and in a much smaller form factor. I bet they could compact a 486DX4 with the best video card from the time, as well as RAM and one of the best sound cards on an SBC the size of a raspberry pi. would propably use less than a watt for the whole thing at 4nm node. Intel should really licence to a third party or even do it themselves as a side project for retro collectors and gamers. If they do it right, with the best video cores and sound cores and making sure to hit all the right checkboxes with analog purists for eg. svga out but done well. it would be incredibly popular and would make many handheld consoles possible but with incredible batterylife because of the node efficiency. much of the old patents have expired for vintage computers so it would be possible to resurrect them in a smaller node. im sure intel still has the designs kicking around somewhere. could do one for the 486dx4 and one for the pentium 200mmx. those are pretty much the sweetspot for most DOS games apart from 286 and 386.