6502 or 65c02 double processor

[Vinci]

Hy Guys,
is it possible to connect two 6502 microprocessors in a circuit so that they work more fluidly, like a dual core for example. separating the data inputs (there are 8 inputs) so each processor would deal with only half of the data.

[drogon]

Vinci wrote:

Hy Guys,
is it possible to connect two 6502 microprocessors in a circuit so that they work more fluidly, like a dual core for example. separating the data inputs (there are 8 inputs) so each processor would deal with only half of the data.

Basically, no.

It won't work like that.

Technically you can connect 2 6502's to the same memory system (or more, but 2 might be easier as each one only needs half the clock cycle to work and access RAM), but you then have the same problem we've had for over half a century now - how to make a program go faster when you run it on 2 (or more) CPUs.

One strategy is to use the same data set over all CPUs but each CPU working on a small part of the data... Imagine Mandelbrot for example - each pixel is calculated totally independently of each other pixel, so with 2 CPUs, each doing odd/even pixels then you might get a 2x speedup. Take this to the extreme for a 640x480 display and if you have 307,200 CPUs then you calculate the entire image at the speed of the longest calculation. However then you have other problem.

There are many other strategys - some work better for some data problems than others.

But multiple 6502s? It might be an interesting academic solution, but my 10 year old laptop is still 1000x faster.

-Gordon