clipka wrote:

> (1) Home computers were toys.

I saw at least one employee using a company-purchased C64 to run 
accounting software to do actual, productive work.

They might be considered toys *now*...

> (2) Capacity of memory basically has nothing to do with access speed. 

Really? So having more bits to decode requiring more address decode 
logic doesn't affect speed in any way? And neither does a larger die 
area necessasitating longer traces?

> The effect you describe for that 2.2 GHz CPU is the effects due to L1 
> and L2 caches - which aren't faster because they are smaller, but 
> because (a) they're closer to the CPU core and (b) they're using faster 
> (but more space-consuming) technology.

I gather that part of the problem is that having traces on the 
motherboard operating into the GHz frequency range isn't very feasible. 
(For reasons such as trace length and electronic interference.) But that 
would still mean that theoretically you could make a single chip that 
contains a couple of CPU cores plus (say) 2GB of RAM. The fact that 
nobody has ever done this indicates that it isn't possible for whatever 
reason.

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