I Remember Mama

These missives have mentioned my forays with the TI-990 mini in two of its forms back in the late 80s and early 90s. The signature characteristic of the machine was its (nearly) registerless design, using main memory for both 'registers' and 'memory'. The motivation for the design was that, at the time, memory speeds and cpu speeds were near enough that a greatly simplified cpu had a cost/benefit edge over conventional designs. Or so the TI engineers thought. Outside of a few verticals, the 990 didn't make much of a splash. Notably, none of the mainframe companies pursued the idea.

Well, may be a bit of that 990 magic could be back. We have this reporting on nanotube memory. It's non-volatile, fast, and dense. A registerless machine, with a single level of storage, makes abundant sense. We'll just have to see.

It's also notable that the company has been around for nearly two decades attempting to get the stuff made. As ARM, it doesn't manufacture. The founders are ex-Harvard, although the Big Cheese isn't a techy. Hmmm??