W65C832S

DonnaD · Post by **DonnaD** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 6:07 am

You may be interested to know that while viewing the datasheet for W65C134S I noticed a reference to the W65C832S 32-bit processor. I guess that means it is a reality.

http://www.westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/ ... 5c134s.pdf

GARTHWILSON · Post by **GARTHWILSON** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 7:00 am

I have the datasheet for it from many years back (15?) but they never made any. More recently they were working on the Terbium processor which would have been higher-performance and supposedly compared favorably with the ARMs, but there hasn't been anything about that either on their website in awhile. I wonder if that got shelved too. (They picked the "Terbium" name because terbium is the 65th element in the periodic chart.)

DonnaD · Post by **DonnaD** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 6:19 pm

The only thing about is, that this datasheet was re-done on May 17, 2007. Which would indicate as of that date, they still had plans for a 32bit.

GARTHWILSON · Post by **GARTHWILSON** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 7:43 pm

I hope you're right, but I think it was just a carry-over from an earlier version of the '134 data sheet. The '134 has been around for a long time.

kc5tja · Post by **kc5tja** » Sat Mar 22, 2008 1:53 am

In previous e-mails with William Mensche, he had reported that the 65832 is a dead design, and is NOT the next-gen Terbium design. Looking at the 832's design, as well, we see that it doesn't match the public information on the Terbium 32-bit processor (e.g., smallest addressible unit is a 16-bit word, not a byte, 32-bit address bus versus 24-bit address bus, etc.).

So far as I am able to tell, the Terbium-32 design does exist, but only in Verilog form, and is doled out via a highly selective process. Again, based on prior e-mails.

Whether or not this is true, however, remains to be seen. I'm personally of the opinion that it is all vaporware, designed to posture WDC against the ARM companies better, in an attempt to drive up sales volume.