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Buster Gonads inspires unfeasibly large Itanic CPU

You'll need a wheelbarrow for this 9MB cache

Down in Intel's Frankenstein laboratories, the scientists are coming up with ever more surreal methods to disguise the comatose Itanium processor project as a living breathing thing.

Drawing their inspiration from those weird genetic scientists who graft ears onto mice, the processor geniuses have come up with a cunning wheeze.

Thanks to process improvements, we hear, the next Itanium2 will feature a hitherto unheard-of cache of 9MB.

British readers of the adult Viz comic, will not have to reach further than their trousers for a simile: because the brothers Chris and Jim Donald created a precursor in the strip "Buster Gonads".

For American readers, Buster Gonads was a character blessed with "unfeasibly large testicles", which he was obliged to carry around in a wheelbarrow. Buster's nuts were enlarged by "cosmic rays" which enlarged them to an "unfeasible size". Leading to all sorts of unforeseen comic situations...

Now for experienced microprocessor designers, this attempt to overcompensate might seem ridiculous. But, on the other hand, it might be an opportunity to graft increasingly surreal "mitigating circumstances" onto underperforming chips. A 9MB cache sounds pretty impressive, to the trade press, don't you think?

So how about a processor with, say, 65,000 pin-outs, arranged as a kind of silicon porcupine? The limits of your imagination are bounded only by your budgets, so think creative.

Artistic prototypes are particularly welcome. ®

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