Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!news.albasani.net!feeder.erje.net!news.internetdienste.de!news.tu-darmstadt.de!news.belwue.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!feed.news.schlund.de!schlund.de!news.online.de!not-for-mail From: Bernd Paysan Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: Would green arrays produce something with a web browser? like a cheap appliance? Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2012 23:27:45 +0100 Organization: 1&1 Internet AG Lines: 57 Message-ID: References: <21380514.535.1326191319881.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@yqnb23> <7f3539b2-0e82-46ae-bf07-94725136d5c0@p13g2000yqd.googlegroups.com> <81cba3c9-a3f2-40ba-867d-c6e393b0d0a4@e8g2000yqd.googlegroups.com> <7xboq3lct9.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <1b326644-7c60-480c-8fdf-681a23b1111c@34g2000yqm.googlegroups.com> <7x7h0qomxi.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <694c58a1-c5a6-4ea7-be90-834b83f5ca4d@do4g2000vbb.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: p5dcd66a6.dip0.t-ipconnect.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit X-Trace: online.de 1327012066 9849 93.205.102.166 (19 Jan 2012 22:27:46 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@einsundeins.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2012 22:27:46 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: KNode/4.7.2 Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.forth:9049 rickman wrote: > I don't see the comparison to GPUs as they are power hungry devices > and do not lend themselves to applications outside of PCs. I've never > seen them used in any other designs. Although they can be separately > programmed, they don't run an OS and don't work standalone. Well, GPUs as such are power hungry devices, but in terms of power/compute power, they are prett damn'd good. A teraflops (single precision) for 200W? Well, if you only need a gigaflop, a GPU is too big for you. > I think your comparison with FPGAs is not too far off target. I > question the price issue as the Cyclone 5 devices are quite large, > even the smallest. Well, it's a 28nm device. It isn't large, even the largest. It just has a lot of gates on it. Because it uses the latest available technology. > But in general the GA144 is prices in the same > ballpark as low end FPGAs. I don't think it would be easy to get the > same processing speed in a low end FPGA, but then at GA144 won't be so > easy to get working with 100+ MHz signals. A GA144 in 28nm would probably a much more impressive device than a Cyclone 5. But it isn't available. I think the Cyclone 5 with the 144 multipliers will beat a GA144 hands down in whatever task you can imagine. I've done my b16 in similar processes as Chuck did his stuff. But that was because my b16 always was just an add-on to some custom-specific ASIC with analog and power components, and analog+power usually is added to decade old processes (there is a current counter-trend to this, because people want SoCs, and the power+analog should not go into another die). The main reason to deploy the b16 never was speed, it always was area and power consumption (be quick to finish is good for power consumption, too). The IO stuff always was dedicated Verilog, not bit-banging in software. It always cooperated with the CPU, or used DMA to write directly into memory. I heard Chuck talking at EuroForth about 10 years ago, when he started this multi-chip endeaver. He clearly said that he thinks this is a cool idea, but did not know what kind of product that would go into. This is the definition of research project. You have a cool idea, but no product. Research is necessary. But to make it a product, you have to think about how people will use it. In a product-driven development, the requirements are first, the solution (the actual implementation) comes next. -- Bernd Paysan "If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself" http://bernd-paysan.de/