James Newman’s ‘Megaprocessor’ Contains 42K Transistors, 1M Hand-Soldered Joints – Took 4 Years to Build
In a word: Wow.
A 42,000-transistor CPU weighing half a ton and built by hand from full-sized components has been installed at the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge, England.
James Newman’s Megaprocessor, a super-sized CPU big enough to walk through, was born as a result of a 2012 work discussion.
“There was a conversation at work about that time when we were talking about debugging something and someone remarked it would be easier if we had an LED on a signal,” he explained to The Register in 2015.
Speaking to the Centre for Computing History last week, Newman added: “This all started with me wanting to learn about transistors. Things got out of hand!”
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Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
