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<panda|z>
xiangfu: morning!
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<kristianpaul>
ha is amazing i couldbuy a 1.2V regulator locally..
<kristianpaul>
perhaps i could use a diode ;)
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<wolfspraul>
dvdk hey David, still sometimes following here?
<wolfspraul>
(he used to read the backlog, so I try :-))
<wolfspraul>
I spent a whole day the other day trying to track down what colorforth and OKAD and those ga144 chips are really about, but couldn't...
<wolfspraul>
do you know more?
<wolfspraul>
it looks like a refusal to reuse/use any other software, resulting in 'no source code' and in the end just some web pages at colorforth.com ?
<wolfspraul>
or is there more?
<wolfspraul>
does OKAD run? are there OKAD source codes?
<wolfspraul>
are the chip designs for those GA144 chips published? do they exist anywhere but in Chuck's brain? :-)
<wolfspraul>
we have to track him down in his cabin in the western midlands somewhere? :-)
<kristianpaul>
thinking about the next forth single porpuse computer (after the wikireader?)
<wolfspraul>
I was comparing vlsi cad software, came across electric, magic, alliance and toped. and the elusive OKAD...
<kristianpaul>
ahmm
<kristianpaul>
ok
<wolfspraul>
not really, I just want to compare what's around
<kristianpaul>
sure sure
<kristianpaul>
i'm to new for forth, but i remenber mcus optimized for java :p
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, it's old package. I have a new version here: 'https://mentors.debian.net/package/fped'. and now I am a DM. so I need a DD upload a new version with one line add (DM-Upload-Allowed: yes)
<xiangfu>
then I can upload/update the package by myself.
<wolfspraul>
a change in US green card processing could not be any more intricate
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, you DO not sleep. it's 1AM Buenos Aires :-)
<wolfspraul>
of the 5 "advantages" listed there one is "DM can't give another DM upload rights for his package anymore"
<wolfspraul>
that's an advantage?
<wolfspraul>
another bottleneck created
<wolfspraul>
great :-)
<wpwrak>
xiangfu: hehe ;-)
<wolfspraul>
the pope himself should sign (and stamp!) a holy letter before any bit moves at all!
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, the first/last/inner frames is useless for bga484/324 right? is that for further use? like some BGA don't have balls at center.
<wolfspraul>
the stamp is only valid if stamped exactly at midnight every year Easter Sunday
<wolfspraul>
makes it safer!
<wpwrak>
wolfspraul: removal of one of the remaining loopholes to avoid bureaucracy :)
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, (best to move the index outside the table) please give me more advise. :) what about those rname?
<wolfspraul>
pabs3: what if a sponsor looses interest, drags his feet or becomes unresponsive?
<wolfspraul>
can you 'unsponsor' a package to look for a new sponsor? can there be two sponsors?
<wolfspraul>
can a sponsor marry another sponsor?
<wpwrak>
xiangfu: there are a few things wrong there ... fixing ... just watch :)
* pabs3
gets bored and goes to watch tv
<wolfspraul>
:-)
<qi-bot>
[commit] Werner Almesberger: modules/bga.fpd: make "row" a loop and use the "row" table only for lookups (master) http://qi-hw.com/p/kicad-libs/e5c8bd9
<wolfspraul>
on a serious note, does it matter that Debian's bug activity is 40% less now than it was 6 years ago?
<wolfspraul>
maybe it's becoming so mature we should just consider the whole thing as more or less stable...
<wpwrak>
this one gets the geometry right. now the Nr-plication of stuff that's needed only once ...
<wpwrak>
wolfspraul: yeah, meaningless statistics
<wolfspraul>
I was surprised about the magnitude of the decline, although it is quite obvious that the whole scene becomes more and more sleepy
<wolfspraul>
wpwrak: how so?
<wolfspraul>
people report bugs differently? not at all? there are less bugs?
<wpwrak>
time is an insufficient correlator. well, you can use this sort of statistics to plan the disk space for the bug database
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, ?row. great. we do need more documents on fped. :-D
<wpwrak>
xiangfu: isn't it self-explaining ? ;-))
<wolfspraul>
bugs per second over 8 years is 'insufficient'?
* xiangfu
have csg324 footprint now. ready to design some PCB for csg324.
<wolfspraul>
the bug tracker is used less, for sure
<wolfspraul>
anyway we won't stop there bigger trends here
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<wolfspraul>
these
<wolfspraul>
I won't go watch TV, but enjoy some sunshine outside :-)
<wpwrak>
xiangfu: now the looping is also a bit better. and yes, inner/outer aren't used. not sure what the idea for them was. (bga.fpd comes from adam)
<wolfspraul>
so my vlsi cad comparison led me to toped
<wolfspraul>
maybe I can abuse it as my visual fpga editor :-)
<wpwrak>
there are some BGAs that have a "stripe" pattern but then, they usually don't assign column numbers to unused column. there are bgas with a empty square at the center, but then you'd also need to skip "inner" columns. so may be this just wasn't finished.
<wolfspraul>
the other tree I looked at were magic and electric, which seemed to be very old (from the 80's) and without much new development
<wolfspraul>
and alliance which is newer (some french university), but also it seems recently they stopped developing/funding?
<wpwrak>
"very stable" ;-)
<wolfspraul>
electric was sponsored by sun but that seems to have stopped around 2009
<wolfspraul>
toped seems like a really new and fresh thing wiht active development (though just 1 or 2 people mainly, I think)
<wolfspraul>
so I start there...
<wpwrak>
toped looks promising. i wonder if the thing about the scripting language means that you get human-readable data files as well (like it is the case with fped)
<xiangfu>
wpwrak, (bgg "inner") ok. I think I will just remove it now. if we needs some bga have a empty square at the center. then we think about it.
<wpwrak>
xiangfu: sounds reasonable
<wolfspraul>
probably not [human readable]
<wolfspraul>
their native file format is some sort of binary database
<wolfspraul>
just keep in mind that the size and efficiency of those files is paramount
<wolfspraul>
that was the main reason for the switch from GDSII to OASIS in recent years
<wolfspraul>
when you are dealing with billions of transistors, 'human readable' may just not be that important
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<dvdk>
wolfspraul: when it comes to OKAD, i think there at most a handful of people who know how to operate it.
<dvdk>
same with the GA144 "dev-kit" (i.e. colorforth)
<dvdk>
I even installed a free (original) version of colorforth under linux, but it's impossible to use. The source-code is mostly in assembler, with a little color-forth code put on top. Very ugly and undocumented (at least the asm part).
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<Guest55383>
dvdk: that was roughly what I thought
<Guest55383>
oops, nick... one sec
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<wolfspra1l>
dvdk: but isn't that a pity? so there is all this talk about how great it is, but then there is nothing really...
<wolfspra1l>
there are some strange colorized assembler codes for DOS (!) which may or may not run under early-90's 'Windows'? urgh...
<wolfspra1l>
as for OKAD? it exists? or is it just a myth? I still don't get it
<wolfspra1l>
'it' is something as tangible as "source code"?
<wolfspra1l>
it seems totally lost, this whole thing. I shall continue with toped unless I feel some boost of enlightenment around OKAD one day :-)
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<dvdk>
OKAD does in fact exist. You just need some form of autism to being able to operate it. And I don't think that you can buy it, nor that there is much written documentation.
<wolfspra1l>
the download of all sources from digitalarrays comes with a disclaimer that their software is only allowed to run on their ga144 chips
<wolfspra1l>
another step 20+ years back
<wolfspra1l>
and that is supposed to be "public domain"?
<wolfspra1l>
man man :-)
<wolfspra1l>
they should really all just retire to some cabins in Montana...
<dvdk>
ik okad public domain? i know that colorforth is. But okad is like 1 MB of (compressed ) color-forth source, I never saw a copy online.
<wolfspra1l>
ah ok
<wolfspra1l>
why not?
<wolfspra1l>
something strange about this Interweb thing?
<dvdk>
It's like: you have to create an enmpty file of size XXX on the floppy disk using windows, then colorforth's "file output" routine can dump a blob of data there.
<wolfspra1l>
"software may only be used with chips manufactured by GreenArrays"
<wolfspra1l>
can I dismiss all this stuff as "crazy stuff of some old hippies" and move on and forward with the real world?
<wolfspra1l>
or is there more to it?
<dvdk>
colorforth even has a (approx 20-line) implementation of a "png export". also it generates a fixed header that amounts to no compression (like a pseudo huffman table, dunno), then dumps the binary data in a way that it looks like a png to an average png reader.
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<viric>
the forth world
<wolfspra1l>
any reason why OKAD was never uploaded/published?
<dvdk>
If you are a friend of extreme minimalism, than OKAD and CF may be interesting. But you want to build real-world chips, with real registers and cache and mmu etc., that's somewhat incompatible with the OKAD and CF philosophy
<wolfspra1l>
is all this stuff serious in any way?
<wolfspra1l>
honestly it strikes me as mostly some form of insanity
<dvdk>
wolfspra1l: well, they did design an asynchronous multi-core CPU with it that actually works, so judge yourself :)
<viric>
it's a bit like the Amish.
<wolfspra1l>
well
<dvdk>
but that CPU has only like 3 registers and 128 bytes of RAM.
<wolfspra1l>
what software runs on those chips, and when?
<wolfspra1l>
in reality, not as yet another 'grand plan'
<wolfspra1l>
and who is using them?
<dvdk>
these chips implement something like a few color-forth-primitives in hardware.
<wolfspra1l>
and what's the point/roadmap?
<wolfspra1l>
sure
<wolfspra1l>
let's get drunk now
<wolfspra1l>
a is b because b is a
<wolfspra1l>
self-referential as in any good religion, no? :-)
<viric>
:)
<dvdk>
so looks like forh-code when you write assembly code. they have a color-forth based "IDE" that allows you to input (a subset of) color-forth code that's turned into binary code for the GA144. They even have an emulator etc.
<wolfspra1l>
dvdk: come on you are real? what is the real thing one can expect out of this - today or tomorrow?
<wolfspra1l>
or it just leads nowhere?
<dvdk>
well, self-referential sure. it's like a second evolution that's not using Carbon but Silicon. Kind of an alternate eco-system.
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<viric>
lots of closed designs around that, though
<wolfspra2l>
ok but is that stuff even open source?
<wolfspra2l>
the okad 'sources' are not published?
<viric>
wolfspra2l: all that philosophy is pre-FSF I think :)
<wolfspra2l>
greenarraychips.com software downloads are "unless specifically noted otherwise" only allowed to run on their chips
<wolfspra2l>
why would I even bother with the dysfunctions of those guys... and try to find some crazy couple dozen "lines" of source codes that maybe can write FAT floppy sectors?
<wolfspra2l>
I don't get it :-) I just don't...
<dvdk>
colorforth is, the GA144 is pretty well documented. but programming it feels like programming an FPGA by manually filling LUTs and setting the routing matrix.
<viric>
haha
<wolfspra2l>
do you have one or programmed it?
<dvdk>
(like 123 bytes ram per core is somewhat like a bug logic slice :)
<dvdk>
s/123/128/
<qi-bot>
dvdk meant: "(like 128 bytes ram per core is somewhat like a bug logic slice :)"
<viric>
yes
<wolfspra2l>
dvdk: what is a good colorforth download url?
<wolfspra2l>
in that world, there's a lot of *talk* about download, not so many things you can actually download
* wolfspra2l
checking david's link...
<dvdk>
no, on linux try my version. chuck's version only runs on bare (old) hardware from floppy, other linux ports have been abandoned
<viric>
haha
<whitequark>
colorforth...
<whitequark>
it seems for me that everyone who uses forth becomes a little bit brain-damaged
<dvdk>
so I had to do some hacking to make it compile&link on 64-bit linux.
<whitequark>
e.g. TeX
<whitequark>
it's absolutely awesome
<whitequark>
but so freaking alien
<viric>
whitequark: I've used a bit of forth, but got out on time ;)
<dvdk>
wolfspra2l: you may want to try to download the official GA144 SDK. That's build around a much newer non-public domain version of colorforth. It even has QWERTY layout and can run from within windodws :)
<dvdk>
(but never tried it)
<viric>
I've a friend that wrote parts of retroforth... (clisp implementation, among others)
<dvdk>
but then I think you'd still waste your time.
<wolfspra2l>
"non-public domain" what does that mean?
<viric>
dvdk: qwerty support? does it require an XT keyboard? :)
<whitequark>
viric: it's an interesting _concept_ indeed. I enjoyed reading about a "functional Forth" implementation
<whitequark>
viric: but if you're going to use it in production you're probably insane
<dvdk>
wolfspraul: what i wanted to say: colorforth=public domain, GA144 SDK = closed source
<wolfspra2l>
ah then why would I bother :-)
<dvdk>
but both based on color-forth, where GA144 SDK is much much newer
<viric>
whitequark: I always thought of Forth as a language for programming стиральные машины
<wolfspra2l>
there must be thousands of one-off proprietary this-and-that chips/archs in the world
<wolfspra2l>
among those that would be one of the stupidest to explore, most likely
<wolfspra2l>
but your link is great, finally
<viric>
wolfspra2l: work better for an antropologist, I think
<wolfspra2l>
thanks!
<wolfspra2l>
those few files look like something real, and I know there is probably not much real in all this
<wolfspra2l>
so this must be it! :-)
<whitequark>
viric: hehe
<whitequark>
you're not too far off, it's used in PostScript printers
<whitequark>
as PS is basically forth
<wolfspra2l>
dvdk: do you think the ga144 has much future?
<dvdk>
wolfspra2l: I wouldn't dismiss thit as stupid. It's just alien to what we're used to deal with. As i said, an alternative eco-system that's incompatible to ours.
<wolfspra2l>
yes but wants to be incompatible too
<viric>
well, all those stack based things... RPN in calculators, forth, ... even jvm is a similar thing.
<dvdk>
wolfspra2l: ask the marsians (or alpha centaurians) about GA144's future
<wolfspra2l>
incompatible to anything that exists today or may exist in the future
<wolfspra2l>
and that's where it gets strange
<wolfspra2l>
at which point I reserve my right to just not care anymore...
<wolfspra2l>
so the fact that this tech serves very few/no real people is almost by design
<dvdk>
wolfspra2l: a niche is a niche.
<viric>
dvdk: there are also the hardware java virtual machines (no more virtual?), or the lisp-on-hardware, ... there are plenty of hw/sw places far from c-programmers. :)
<wolfspra2l>
dvdk: yes :-) and that's an extreme one :-)
<dvdk>
as I said, think of it as silicon-based life. it just can.t thrive on earth, and ther won't be a place wher it can be a competitor to us carbon-based critters
<wolfspra2l>
do you know anyone who has one of those ga144 boards or is programming on it?
<wolfspra2l>
are any 'source codes' of such software being published anywhere?
<wolfspra2l>
god forbid on something as ...
<wolfspra2l>
I hardly dare to say it
<wolfspra2l>
... github
<wolfspra2l>
? :-)
<viric>
dvdk: since those chips have been released years ago... there should be some writings about their impact, is there?
<dvdk>
yes. not personally. a few on comp.lang.forth usegroup write about it.
<viric>
dvdk: remove the dates from comp.lang.forth random posts, and try to guess the decade.
<wolfspra2l>
I would be interested in what software runs on them, and source code of that of course
<wolfspra2l>
dvdk: thanks a lot for your insight and source link!
<wolfspra2l>
that boosted the level of what is 'real' by about a factor of 10 for me :-)
<viric>
I always remember that post, when I see forth reviving again in some room. :)
<dvdk>
wolfspra2l: there's a colorforth google-group i just found out.
<wolfspra2l>
yes but I just wanted to make sure that there wasn't this vibrant OKAD github community somewhere, with dozens of people contributing and taping-out last-gen chips etc.
<wolfspra2l>
which of course there isn't, so I'm done :-)
<wolfspra2l>
I have a pretty clear idea/imagination of what that OKAD thing actually is/was
<dvdk>
viric: no, the original color-forth implements kind of a dvorak-layout that uses only about 30 keys, other functions are activated by cycling layouts.
<dvdk>
ah, and it's not ASCII, it's a proprietary 64-char character set that's usually huffman-compressed in chunks of 32-bit words
<dvdk>
AFAIR the original version even didn't have separate 'i' and '1' glyphs. why bother when they *look* the same :)
<wolfspra2l>
I shall continue with toped...
<dvdk>
s/glyphs/charcodes/
<qi-bot>
dvdk meant: "AFAIR the original version even didn't have separate 'i' and '1' charcodes. why bother when they *look* the same :)"
<wolfspra2l>
again, thanks a lot for the feedback! that is really hard in that scene to find anything that relates to something real...
<wolfspra2l>
it just makes you search harder and harder
<dvdk>
no prob.
<dvdk>
a lot of people are excitedly waiting for fpgatools to become less vaporwareish
<dvdk>
, btw
<viric>
dvdk: haha typing machines had 'l' and '1' the same, not 'i' and '1'. :)
<viric>
dvdk: why think of another character-number coding, if we already have EBCDIC?
<viric>
btw, I always wanted to program the Saturn chips of HP 48, that I heard had 20-bit words with 5-bit nibbles.
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<wpwrak>
viric: pre-FSF or pre-gnu (those with the horns) ? :)
<viric>
I think the gnu with horns was first though, yes. :)
<wolfspra1l>
yes fpgatools has a steep curve now
<wolfspra1l>
did some more directional wires, vertical and horizontal
<wolfspra1l>
then lots more clock routing, bufgmux, and and and
<wolfspra1l>
now the diagonal ones
<wolfspra1l>
:-)
<wolfspra1l>
dvdk: is there software for the ga144 that is open source/published anywhere?
<dvdk>
wolfspra1l: do you mean dev-kit or software running *on* the GA144
<dvdk>
here is e.g. a md5 hash algorithm implementation for GA144.
<dvdk>
you'll see it's more FPGA-like than CPU-like
<wpwrak>
wolfspra1l: colorforth and github ... wouldn't they have their own revision control system, completely alien to anything we know ? and of course, not communicating via TCP/IP. maybe some highly efficient DIY protocol over 300 bps modems, to go with the floppies.
<wpwrak>
hmm. an application note. implementing a well-known hash (nothing DIY). i smell heresy :)
<lindi->
wolfspra1l: should blinking_led.c already work?
<viric>
wpwrak: what makes you think they use a RCS?
<dvdk>
wpwrak: they have no text-file format that you can read, so you can only commit thnem as binary blobs
<dvdk>
so that means yes
<dvdk>
I also read that htey think about doing version control from within colorforth
<dvdk>
wpwrak: about the app-note: don't worry it's the only GA144 app-node of it's kind :)
<wpwrak>
i think they learned their lesson from the internet. remember how great and full of freedom it was before big business and governments noticed it ? now that would be a way to make sure those old enemies never even get close :)
<viric>
if even nodejs could become popular, I think Forth could achieve something similar, once mastering the art of pastel-color CSS in Helvetica web pages.
<viric>
pastel colors and helvetica are the most determining factors to a broad success of a project, I think. :)
<viric>
- I feel a bit too nihilist today
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<larsc>
and I always though blink tags were the way to success. damm, had it wrong all these years, but that may explain why my projects never took off ;)
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<wpwrak>
larsc: you mean you didn't put enough emphasis on obscurity and the arcane ?
<larsc>
wpwrak: I sure did! The projects are hidden 5 paths deep on a obscure domain name. And I think I only gave the link to a handful of people
<larsc>
Oh and the page only renders correct with firefox 0.97-0.99
<wpwrak>
you put it on the web ? i keep my stuff on a mailbox, only accessible via direct dial-in.
<wpwrak>
download via my own enhanced (incompatible) variant of kermit.
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<larsc>
_I_ put it on the web, indeed.
<wolfspraul>
dvdk: sorry was away and lots of disconnects. do you think it may make sense to try to run the mini-cpu from inside the g144 in an fpga?
<wolfspraul>
I think the instruction set is documented - but is it usable for anything at all?
<wolfspraul>
I am looking for some small test-'cores' for fpgatools, and a big cpu like lm32/openrisc may still be too much for me at the beginning
<wolfspraul>
do you have any experience with that cpu, can you recommend it at least for further study?
<wpwrak>
how about making your own mini-cpu ? the basics are very simple.
<wolfspraul>
lindi- no, not working yet
<wolfspraul>
lots of detours, a little depressing but I try to just steer right through
<wolfspraul>
I have to spend more time around the clocking stuff first
<wolfspraul>
I'm a little anti-forth here, I guess. if there is something I can reuse, why not reuse it?
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<wolfspraul>
:-)
<wpwrak>
any "real-life" core is likely to be a lot more complex than the minimum you need for demonstration purposes.
<larsc>
maybe use the navre core
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<wpwrak>
of course, the first question should be what this core would actually be expected to do. blink a led ? control a robot ? run linux ?
<larsc>
how about 'do something'
<larsc>
it doesn't matter that much if the goal is to show that fpgatools is working
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<wpwrak>
sounds like a case for a core with two registers, maybe 8 bit word size. 8+something instruction size. harvard arch.
<wpwrak>
or maybe accumulator plus register array is easier
<wolfspraul>
or maybe I search the other way round and look for interesting/new llvm backends, since I don't want to be stuck with something where no sw runs...
<wpwrak>
mmh, that would put you into the feature-rich core segment
<wpwrak>
if you;re looking for something that just gets "something" done, but you have to program it in assembler, then you can make a super-simplistic architecture
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<dvdk>
wolfspraul: just coming back from lunch.
<dvdk>
wolfspraul: the GA144's mini CPU is an asynchronous design: no clock. don't think this will easily port to an FPGA.
<dvdk>
However, there is a core that follows very similar design ideas, developed by a german forther. The B16 core, with a even smaller "b16-mini" version
<dvdk>
it's GPL. Uses a very similar, highly efficient instruction packing that allows to build large programs with very little instruction RAM
<dvdk>
originally this was developed for a real ASIC for the company Bernd was working for, then the FPGA version open-sourced. The documentation describes various ASIC-specific optimizations like replacing registers with latches.
<dvdk>
the compiler is written in Gforth, and the assembly code reads like normal forth code (i.e. not color-forth, and much saner)
<dvdk>
there is an even simpler Stack-based core called J1, but it's a 32-bit architecture and needs moer instruction RAM:
<dvdk>
it's open source, and the forth-written software stack for this thing supports even tcp/ip
<dvdk>
this may be easier to work with than B16, architecture is simpler.
<dvdk>
no instruction decoder at all, instruction word directly switching RTL data flow
<dvdk>
oops, mistake, J1 is also a 16-bit CPU just like B16
<lekernel>
wolfspraul: are you in Germany near the end of the year?
<wolfspraul>
great links, thanks!
<wolfspraul>
which of those is a good starting point for getting whatever 'other' software to run?
<wolfspraul>
why would an asynchronous cpu design not work in an fpga?
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<lekernel>
because it has plenty of D flip flops and global clock networks which would go unused, resulting in a quite suboptimal design
<lekernel>
and the vendor software doesn't have good support for asynchronous stuff
<wpwrak>
wolfspraul: what's the objective for implementing a core ? it sounds like a bit of a detour to me, at least as far as gaining knowledge is concerned.
<wolfspraul>
oh sure, no worries. I am not doing this now. the point is to guide me a bit through the really large amount of features in the fpga
<wolfspraul>
without focus, I can spend years there
<wolfspraul>
I am implementing the blinking led now :-)
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<wpwrak>
(years) hmm, sounds bad ... in an exciting way :)
<larsc>
well, software is never done
<larsc>
it can only become obsolete
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<viric>
larsc: luckily gnu hello is maintained to avoid becoming obsolete.
<wolfspraul>
as the links from david show there may well be some nice & tiny experimental cores out there
<wpwrak>
yeah, the software life-cycle. planning (optional), first prototype, alpha/beta version (repeat as many times as necessary), abandonment.
<wolfspraul>
that may be a better first step or focus generator at some point than a larger core
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<wolfspraul>
may
<wolfspraul>
I'm just happy I can read a bit through those cores and think
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<roh>
morning
<wolfspraul>
good morning
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<kristianpaul>
wolfspraul: small cpu like lattice mico8?
<kristianpaul>
morning
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<wolfspraul>
dvdk: ok I looked briefly at the b16 and j1 pages, will read more tomorrow
<wolfspraul>
what is the future of those projects?
<wolfspraul>
any plans you know about?
<wolfspraul>
or are they basically finished?
<wolfspraul>
b16 looks older (2002-2005), j1 more recent (2010). can't immediately tell other differences in stated goal or roadmap (if any)
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<wolfspraul>
200 lines of verilog (for the j1) sounds good
<wolfspraul>
that gives me plenty of lines to play with (in how they translate into the fpga...), which is all I am looking for right now
<wolfspraul>
and there is a url right there on his page, what a relief after the colorforth day :-)
<dvdk>
wolfspraul: b16 is more a CISC processor and J1 more a RISC-style processor
<dvdk>
(bernd would disagree, actually b16 is not cisc-like, but compared to the J1 it does more instruction decoding and has lower throughput)
<dvdk>
so b16 is more for controller applications, and J1 can do more media processing (like moving data from camera to network interface)
<dvdk>
b16 is to J1 like ARM to MIPS
<dvdk>
I think both are somehow used commercially: B16 in ASIC (with FPGA version used for rapid prototyping), while J1 is FPGA-only, AFAICS
<dvdk>
Both use Gforth-written software for software development (assembler/compiler)
<dvdk>
I guess b16 is harder to grok, it's has more optimization quirks that are difficult to follow, while J1 is very straight-forward
<dvdk>
If you want to know stuff about ASIC-targetting design, then the B16 documentation / papers will most likely be interesting to read
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<kyak>
!seen xiangfu
<qi-bot>
kyak, xiangfu (~xiangfu@123.115.1.233) was last seen quitting #milkymist 3 hours 17 minutes ago (01.11. 14:15) stating "Remote host closed the connection" after spending 20 minutes there.
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<kyak>
wpwrak: could you please give a brief status of atusb support in kernel? I'm looking to build it as a module (for linux-3.6) and package it for for my distro (using dkms)
<kyak>
i'm looking at instructions in ben-wpan/install/INSTALL-PC and wonder if they are still valid
<kyak>
for kernel part, that is
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<kyak>
btw, they are not valid any longer for user space tools. lowpan-tools are now ported to libnl v.3, so libnl1 is no longer needed
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<kyak>
anyway, user space is not bothering me at all.. i already packages the lowpan-tools.. Now wondering how do it with kernel. My stock kernel has some of the mentioned options as =m, and some are missing
<wpwrak>
kyak: i haven't touched it in a very long while. i think more than a year
<kyak>
the missing options i guess are provided by patches in qi-kernel.git. Makes me wonder if ti possible at all to avoid rebuilding of stock kernel
<kyak>
heh, the "software life cycle" you mentioned earlier :)
<viric>
I thought the same :)
<wpwrak>
i think xiangfu did some integration for more recent kernels. so that should be in the qi kernel.
<kyak>
yeah, i remember he did things for a router with usb.. i wonder how intrusive this integration is
<kyak>
i'd like to have atusb.c and atusb.h :)
<kyak>
and then simply atusb.ko
<kyak>
ok.. thanks anyway
<wpwrak>
the integration may merely be tracking of the linux-zigbee work. that provides the WPAN infrastructure.
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