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Re: GA144 polyForth

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Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> writes:
> I have just downloaded the latest arrayForth and polyForth systems for
> the GreenArrays GA144 EV001 evaluation board, dusted down the eval
> board and installed it...

That sounds really cool.  Thanks for the post.  Had you been using
eforth on the eval board before?

> 2. There is no cross compiler because the GA144 polyForth compiles
> itself on the chip - the PC is only a terminal.

I'm just wondering but do they distribute it as source code so you can
rebuild it yourself?

> 3. There is no "inner interpreter" AKA "address interpreter" because
> the F18 cores are programmed to be the polyForth virtual machine. OK,
> you can argue semantics here...

I wish they would document how the VM works.  Greg Bailey had a plea for
someone to target a C compiler to the GA144, but I couldn't make enough
sense of the VM source listing to tell whether those VM nodes (they have
ROM code for the vm) could be a sensible C target already.

> the other 100+ F18's via Ganglia and Snorkels ( whatever they are -
> more docs please GA guys :-)

That's the stuff for routing code and data around the GA144.  It's
mentioned on some of the videos (type "greenarrays" into youtube).

> : asd  1000 for 1000 for 0 drop next next ;
> takes about 3 seconds. 

OK, I remember hearing something like 250ns access time to the external
ram, so each pass through the loop is doing 10-12 ram accesses (the F18
cycles probably don't use much of that 3 sec).  I guess not too bad,
figuring it's a traditional threaded interpreter.

> IIRC a 16 MHx Novix takes less than 1 second for this, and most 8 bit
> processors are some tens of seconds.

Hrm, do you mean recent 8 bitters?  And I wonder how something like an
MSP430 (16 bit) would do.

> Speed wise, the combination of GA144, SPI EEPROM and SRAM, running
> polyForth looks plenty fast enough for the sort of embedded apps I
> usually work with.

> Power wise, it looks good too.

Did you measure the power, running that 3 second loop?  I wonder how it
really compares with something like an MSP430, since those VM nodes are
running at 700 mhz or so.  OTOH they may be idle most of the time,
waiting for the external ram.

> All in all it could compete with an MSP430, 8051 or a PIC except that
> only with the GA144 do you get so many fast cores with fast I/O to
> play with.

Right now it sounds sort of like a somewhat unusual FPGA, as Rickman has
pointed out a few times.  It's nice that there's now a working "soft
core" using a few of its cells that can run a relatively conventional
software environment (calling Polyforth conventional just shows how far,
er, ahead of the curve GA is).

> The GA144 with polyForth seems to be to good not to use...
> Just sharing my excitement - well done to all the GreenArray folks!

Yes, it's a good development, and makes the product more "real".
Congrats GA.

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GA144 polyForth Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-09-27 14:16 -0700
  Re: GA144 polyForth Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-09-29 01:20 -0700
    Re: GA144 polyForth rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-09-30 11:05 -0400
      Re: GA144 polyForth Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-09-30 09:06 -0700
        Re: GA144 polyForth rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-09-30 14:29 -0400
          Re: GA144 polyForth Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-09-30 19:56 -0700
    Re: GA144 polyForth Coos Haak <chforth@hccnet.nl> - 2012-09-30 21:54 +0200
    Re: GA144 polyForth Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-10-01 11:18 -0700
      Re: GA144 polyForth Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-10-01 23:40 -0700
        Re: GA144 polyForth "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-10-01 21:23 -1000
          Re: GA144 polyForth albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2012-10-05 19:19 +0000
        Re: GA144 polyForth Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-10-04 23:04 -0700
  Re: GA144 polyForth Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-10-01 10:28 -0500
    Re: GA144 polyForth Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-10-01 11:19 -0700
      Re: GA144 polyForth Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-10-03 10:46 -0500
        Re: GA144 polyForth Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-10-04 13:46 -0700
  Re: GA144 polyForth Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-10-05 22:10 -0700
    Re: GA144 polyForth Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-10-05 23:17 -0700
      Re: GA144 polyForth Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-10-06 05:47 -0700
        Re: GA144 polyForth rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-10-07 19:31 -0400
          Re: GA144 polyForth Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-10-08 20:10 +0200
            Re: GA144 polyForth rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-10-08 16:36 -0400
          Re: GA144 polyForth Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-10-08 13:31 -0700
            Re: GA144 polyForth rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-10-09 13:48 -0400
              Re: GA144 polyForth Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-10-09 13:21 -0700
                Re: GA144 polyForth rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-10-09 17:08 -0400
                Re: GA144 polyForth Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-10-13 07:39 -0700
                Re: GA144 polyForth rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-10-13 14:28 -0400
                Re: GA144 polyForth Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-10-13 13:37 -0700
                Re: GA144 polyForth rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-10-13 16:54 -0400
                Re: GA144 polyForth Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-10-13 14:14 -0700
                Re: GA144 polyForth rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-10-13 17:30 -0400
                Re: GA144 polyForth Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-10-14 02:00 -0700
                Re: GA144 polyForth rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-10-14 19:54 -0400
                Re: GA144 polyForth Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-10-15 11:03 -0700
                Re: GA144 polyForth rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-10-15 16:38 -0400
                Re: GA144 polyForth Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-10-16 04:12 -0700
                Re: GA144 polyForth rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-10-16 15:46 -0400
                Re: GA144 polyForth Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-10-16 23:05 -0700
                Re: GA144 polyForth rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-10-17 13:40 -0400
                Re: GA144 polyForth Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-10-17 22:54 -0700
            Re: GA144 polyForth rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-10-18 14:53 -0400
              Re: GA144 polyForth rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-10-18 15:06 -0400
                Re: GA144 polyForth rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-10-18 15:09 -0400
              Re: GA144 polyForth Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-10-19 10:43 -0700
                Re: GA144 polyForth rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-10-19 17:43 -0400
  Re: GA144 polyForth Mikael Nordman <oh2aun@invalid.com> - 2012-10-06 11:29 +0300
    Re: GA144 polyForth mhx@iae.nl (Marcel Hendrix) - 2012-10-06 11:14 +0200
      Re: GA144 polyForth Mikael Nordman <oh2aun@invalid.com> - 2012-10-06 16:08 +0300
    Re: GA144 polyForth Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-10-07 10:57 -0700

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