Re: The Map Is Not The Territory

From	John Passaniti <john.passaniti@gmail.com>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.forth
Subject	Re: The Map Is Not The Territory
Date	2012-06-28 13:19 -0700
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On Thursday, June 28, 2012 5:47:18 AM UTC-4, Mark Wills wrote:
> Of course, it may be that the chip is more suitable 
> for much lower level jobs than I'm thinking of (like 
> a programmble discrete component), whereas I'm 
> thinking in terms of applications.

In many of the FPGA-based systems I've been involved with, there was usually some parts of the design that didn't make sense to implement in programmable logic.  For example, in one system we had some rather complicated conditional configuration logic that would have been a bear to express in terms of VHDL.  Instead, we instantiated a small microcontroller in the FPGA and expressed it in terms of software.

The GA144 seems like it would benefit from the same approach.  In the kinds of applications where one might use a GA144, I can easily see many of the chip's processors being used for the timing-critical computation and physical interfaces.  But I can also see using some of the chip's processors to implement a small virtual machine where it would be easier and more natural to express some parts of the system as higher-level code for that virtual machine.

GreenArrays kinda sorta does this in their evaluation board, except there they dedicate a separate GA144 for that purpose.  It would be interesting to learn if anyone knows how much of the host GA144 is being used to implement that virtual machine (the interfaces to the SPI flash, SRAM, UART, and the VM itself).  If it leaves a significant portion of the chip's resources available, then maybe one way to view the GA144 in real-world applications would be as a sort of microcontroller with a programmable instruction set and non-dedicated processing blocks for computation and physical interfaces.

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The Map Is Not The Territory Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2012-06-27 17:44 -0700
  Re: The Map Is Not The Territory dambere@web.de - 2012-06-28 02:32 -0700
    Re: The Map Is Not The Territory Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-06-28 02:47 -0700
      Re: The Map Is Not The Territory John Passaniti <john.passaniti@gmail.com> - 2012-06-28 13:19 -0700
        Re: The Map Is Not The Territory dambere@web.de - 2012-06-29 14:29 -0700
  Re: The Map Is Not The Territory quiet_lad <gavcomedy@gmail.com> - 2012-06-29 14:44 -0700
    Re: The Map Is Not The Territory "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-06-29 12:17 -1000
    Re: The Map Is Not The Territory rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-06-29 16:15 -0700
  Re: The Map Is Not The Territory quiet_lad <gavcomedy@gmail.com> - 2012-06-29 14:43 -0700
    Re: The Map Is Not The Territory Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2012-06-30 10:46 -0700
      Re: The Map Is Not The Territory rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-06-30 19:54 -0700
        Re: The Map Is Not The Territory Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-07-01 09:14 -0700
          Re: The Map Is Not The Territory rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-07-01 14:12 -0700
        Re: The Map Is Not The Territory Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-07-01 20:40 +0200
          Re: The Map Is Not The Territory Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-07-01 12:15 -0700
            Re: The Map Is Not The Territory Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-07-01 23:52 +0200
          Re: The Map Is Not The Territory rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-07-01 14:41 -0700
            Re: The Map Is Not The Territory Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-07-02 00:23 +0200
              Re: The Map Is Not The Territory Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-07-05 00:06 -0700
                Re: The Map Is Not The Territory rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-07-05 10:49 -0700
              Re: The Map Is Not The Territory rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-07-05 10:38 -0700
                Re: The Map Is Not The Territory Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-07-06 02:22 +0200
                Re: The Map Is Not The Territory rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-07-05 18:57 -0700
                Re: The Map Is Not The Territory Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-07-06 02:13 -0700
                Re: The Map Is Not The Territory Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-07-07 01:11 +0200
                Re: The Map Is Not The Territory Albert van der Horst <albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl> - 2012-07-06 10:58 +0000
                Re: The Map Is Not The Territory rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-07-06 06:00 -0700
                Re: The Map Is Not The Territory Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-07-06 20:41 -0700
                Re: The Map Is Not The Territory rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-07-07 06:56 -0700
                Re: The Map Is Not The Territory Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-07-07 21:45 -0700
                Re: The Map Is Not The Territory rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-07-08 15:53 -0700
                Re: The Map Is Not The Territory Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-07-08 21:08 -0700
                Re: The Map Is Not The Territory rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-07-09 16:32 -0700
              Re: The Map Is Not The Territory Brad Eckert <hwfwguy@gmail.com> - 2012-07-05 13:22 -0700
            Re: The Map Is Not The Territory Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-07-02 01:26 -0700
              Re: The Map Is Not The Territory stephenXXX@mpeforth.com (Stephen Pelc) - 2012-07-02 10:15 +0000
            Re: The Map Is Not The Territory "Paul E. Bennett" <Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk> - 2012-07-02 19:28 +0100
  Re: The Map Is Not The Territory Albert van der Horst <albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl> - 2012-07-01 11:35 +0000
    Re: The Map Is Not The Territory Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-07-01 09:31 -0700
      Re: The Map Is Not The Territory Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-07-01 14:03 -0700
        Re: The Map Is Not The Territory rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-07-01 14:57 -0700
    Re: The Map Is Not The Territory rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-07-01 14:50 -0700

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