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Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement

Cross-posted to 2 groups.

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Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:
> The Toad-1 featured a processor roughly 2x faster than the KL-10...
> The TOAD-2 processor is a reimplementation of the Toad-1 in a single
> FPGA.  The primary file systems are on 2 microSD cards... They are
> still using (bigger, faster) FPGAs in their designs.

Thanks for this info!  Can you say the speed of the Toad-2 relative to
the Toad-1?  Do you mean to say versions of the Toad-2 are still being
built?  How fast are the newest ones?  Are the microSD cards anywhere
near reliable enough to use for a timesharing file system?

> Len has always held that smart engineers can get the speeds they want
> from better designs, instead of wasting time on ASICs

Well, true up to a point ;).  Anyway, for a PDP-10 system, an FPGA
implementation can probably approach the limit of where a faster cpu is
really useful.  I.e. software written on actual DECsystem 10's never
expected such speed and wasn't designed to really make use of it.

> At the time we build the Toad-1 ... PC clocks had not reached the 1GHz
> range yet,

I don't know how a 1ghz PC would have compared to a KL-10 if the
emulation software was carefully optimized, or what speeds the DEC Alpha
(another possible emulation host) might have gone at.  The Alpha was
native 64 bit while amd64 didn't come out til a few years later.  I'm
sure your group knew about the Alpha though, and made a considered
decision.

These days, large FPGA's are still super expensive, so software
emulations on conventional cpus must have significant cost advantages,
even if you have to use more of them.

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Thread

XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement "Stephen M. Jones" <smj@twenex.org> - 2021-09-24 04:55 +0000
  Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2021-09-25 01:17 -0700
    Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> - 2021-09-25 20:54 -0400
      Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2021-09-29 00:48 -0700
  Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement drb@ihatespam.msu.edu (Dennis Boone) - 2021-09-26 10:00 -0500
  Re: XKL (PDP10) Site Announcement Charles Richmond <codescott@aquaporin4.com> - 2021-10-06 15:10 -0500

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