Discussing System On Chip (SoC) - Computerphile

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Published 2021-11-22

All Comments (21)
  • I’m mostly impressed the camera guy casually knew what week number it is
  • @spikeevans1488
    Very good video. As a retired HDD firmware engineer, I can tell you that storage devices had systems on a chip (multicore). In fact everything on an hdd has gotten smaller, use less power, and faster over the decades.
  • @sepgorut2492
    I'm sure everyone would like to join me in wishing the Acorn A3010 SoC a very happy birthday 🎂
  • @VibesNick
    Thank you Computerphile and Steve for a lovely video, once again ! Probably my favorite channel on YouTube.
  • What we had before a microcontroller? A suitcase full of TTL circuits.
  • @flyball1788
    "I am not a chip designer" - never thought I'd hear that disclaimer, hooray for engineers :)
    IAACD (I am a chip designer) and this was a really good outside view of why SoC so good job all.
    Only addition I'd make is that it used to take a couple of engineers about 2 months from inception to prototype to design a new computer (what I did before SoC), a few thousand quid for a handful of prototypes and you could test and fix it in "real life" with a soldering iron until it was working and start selling the final product a few months later. With SoC it takes more than 2 months just to very precisely specify what it does and probably more like a team of 12 engineers 2 years and a few hundred thousand quid to getting a chip that has a chance of working and there's no bodging it with a soldering iron when it doesn't so add another pile of cash and 6 months+ if you got it wrong, which is why most technological changes are now evolutions not revolutions.
  • @Jone952
    It's crazy that in one clock cycle light can only travel 10cm. These are some incredible machines
  • @WistrelChianti
    Thanks! Very interesting discussion of the differences and pros and cons. The 3GHz track length thing was fascinating! Hadn't appreciated at that speed we were getting into such considerations.
  • @TaleTN
    Actually I think you can go back a bit further, because in the early/mid 1980s there already were quite a few MCUs that combined CPU with timer(s), A/D converter, UART, etc.
  • @brandonmack111
    As far as signaling, all of this is true, even without taking capacitance and em interference into account, which are far bigger problems for high frequency signals, and are much easier to manage / plan for in an SOC.
  • @leomuzzitube
    I think you should have mentioned the most important leap in modern SoC design: incorporating the RAM.
  • @francismendes
    I already know what a SoC is, but I watch the video anyway because I know I'll still learn a thing or two from Dr. Steve.
  • This video was absolutely amazing. Please, do more like these. Similar topic, maybe about other HW…
  • @Lttlemoi
    Nowadays if you want to customize the entire thing down to the cpu, you can always plonk down an fpga, use a soft ARM or RISC-V core and build the rest of your custom circuity into the firmware without ever needing to design and produce a custom physical chip.
  • @MeneGR
    I love that CTM644 in the background, on top of the MP-3 TV tuner. Really nice!
  • @awanderer5446
    Dr. Steve Bagley, what a lovely guy. Looks like he's living the dream with all the retro devices in his office!
  • @RagHelen
    "Somewhere here in my archive" — which is everything in a 200 degree radius behind his back.
  • @jimsmind3894
    I'm sure I heard somewhere that the latest Raspberry Pi is originally a SoC for a set top box.
  • @Archimedes75009
    ARM250 based Archimedes ( A3010, A3020, A4000 ) can be very easily overclocked up to 24 Mhz thanks to faster DRAMS.
    It's all detailed on the Stardot forum.