Good info Michael

The 2k SRAM (the majority) acts as multiple buffers. Very similarly formatted as a 2-dimensional array.

The system itself is not very time critical in that user action occurs occasionally with very little stuff going on in between. Memory access would only occur at a maximum of maybe every few seconds.

Occasionally a BIG calculation has to take place which will involve some multi-byte division, multiplication, etc. The user expect to see the result within a second or two MAX. On the 6502 a lot of lookup tables were used to speed up the calculation. However, the calculations don't require really any large memory fetches.

My biggest fear was that the 6502 was uber-efficient with math, but this doesn't seem to be the case. And with this being the most timely requirement, I'm pretty sure a 6-clk 20Mhz-ish 8051 will be more than enough.

Thanks for the info as always.
J