Re: GA144 polyForth

From	rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.forth
Subject	Re: GA144 polyForth
Date	2012-09-30 14:29 -0400
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<k4a322$2ob$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References	<32e7fd8d-7494-4010-a9d5-d9673a3df831@googlegroups.com> <7xtxuhtf3b.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <k49n48$gmj$1@dont-email.me> <7x7grbh4w8.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com>

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On 9/30/2012 12:06 PM, Paul Rubin wrote:
> rickman<gnuarm@gmail.com>  writes:
>>> 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
>> I can see running one VM to facilitate high level
>> control or UI functions but running many of them can be difficult
>
> Yes, the idea is to just run one VM with control and UI stuff.  The VM
> is programmed into the ROM of 3 nodes that sit near the nodes programmed
> to be the external SRAM controller.  I don't think anyone was talking
> about running multiple ones.  Greg was looking to be able to program the
> VM in C.

Ok, I guess I got confused when Howerd referred to "a few of the F18 
cores", he means one virtual machine on three nodes.

>>>> the other 100+ F18's via Ganglia and Snorkels
>>> mentioned on some of the videos (type "greenarrays" into youtube).
>> I don't recall seeing this anywhere.  Chuck has done his stuff on
>> inter-node comms but I don't recall these names being used
>
> http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=greenarrays
>
> It's on the second page of results.

I'll take a look when I get a chance.  Video is my least favorite way of 
getting technical info.  I find it time consuming for the amount of 
information conveyed and hard to review.  But then GA doesn't let you 
make notes on the PDF files either.  Sometimes it seems like they don't 
want you to learn about this stuff.

>> If it is running one node at full speed, it will use around 5 mW.
>> Many 8 bitters will use around that same power level, but this would
>> need to be normalized to their computing time.
>
> The computing time is on the same order as the GA running the VM.  I'm
> kind of surprised to hear that modern 8 bitters use anything like 5mw if
> they care about power at all, though.

8 bitters are just a little better on power (if at all) than 32 bitters, 
IIRC.  I seem to find a lot of parts running at around 200 uA/MHz with 
various voltages on the core.  So at 8 MHz 5 mW would be a good number 
for most CPUs.  At full speed even the good 32 bitters can get up to 
30-40 mW without too much trouble.

I don't see a lot of value in running a VM on the GA144 at the same 
speed and possibly more power than many MCUs.  Looking at the rest of 
the chip as the reason to use the GA144, what is there?  It has some 
real potential for software based IO, but this is also very limiting. 
Many MCUs have 100 Mbps Ethernet, the GA144 does 10 Mbps.  Many MCUs 
have 480 Mbps USB2.0, the GA144 doesn't have USB implemented as yet, but 
it might be able to support 12 Mbps.

There are so many things the GA144 can't do without external support 
chips, including storing more than a few kBytes of information.

I thought I had a handle on a way to use the device by looking at it as 
a processor based analog to an FPGA, but when I tried to design with it 
that way I couldn't get all the info I needed from GA.  They just didn't 
want to support any method of working other than their way.  I can't 
imagine how they would support C developers who are used to big, complex 
tools for developing C programs.

I can't see how providing a C compiler to use with a single VM running 
at similar speeds to an 8 bit MCU will be any real incentive to use the 
GA144 and it would be tons of work.  Forth is not a bad language for 
developing high level code and it is not hard to learn.  They need tools 
to let people deal with the real problems of using the GA144 which seems 
to be the floor planning.  In the short term I would think this would be 
app notes more than anything else that would take so much longer to 
develop.

Rick

Thread

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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