>> The Apple A8X, found in the iPad Air 2, contains about 3 billion transistors. (This is comparable to the number of transistors in modern desktop computer CPUs as well.) At the scale of the MOnSter 6502, that would take about 885,000 square feet (over 20 acres or 8 hectares) — an area about 940 ft (286 m) square.
For comparison, a large footprint 35 floor high rise office tower might have 550,000 sq ft of total space, including central hallways/elevator lobby areas.
At that scale, I imagine the speed of electricity is a significant issue limiting clock speed.
It would take light about 956 nanoseconds to travel the 940 feet across that theoretical CPU. Assuming that was the limiting factor in your clock speed, that would cap it at 1.05 Mhz.
Obviously, it's going to be far more complex than that, but I'd be really surprised if they could get the clock any faster than that.
You would be murdered by the capacitance of the discrete components before even seeing MHz on the horizon. (The author cites gate capacitance here as limiting _this_ "small" CPU to 60 KHz)
And the latest generation of high end mobile phone system-on-chip is up in the 6-7 billion transistor range, so we can double that size again from 20 to 40 acres for whatever apple are in the middle of announcing for a new phone right about now...
>> How big would a modern CPU be at this scale?
>> The Apple A8X, found in the iPad Air 2, contains about 3 billion transistors. (This is comparable to the number of transistors in modern desktop computer CPUs as well.) At the scale of the MOnSter 6502, that would take about 885,000 square feet (over 20 acres or 8 hectares) — an area about 940 ft (286 m) square.