It doesnt want to say what processor it is. All I can see is that it is a RISC (what isnt) and has 15 x 32bit registers. Sounds like an ARM ut why dont they say so.
I am about to work on an FPGA single chip computer. Taking an open MIPS(ish) core and connecting it up to some peripherals. The best thing about its is that it will be completely open. Opencomputer will start as an FPGA but I am hoping to find a good excuse to manufacture it along with an asynchronous version and make my self a fully open PC.
They do use the mips ISA too. I own the yellow star project and the strange thing is that I got an email from a guy in a military university in china intrested in some details. He must have looked quite deeply into the design to ask them
Ther is also Phex. Gtk Gnutella is my favorite and I believe you can compile it for MacosX. If not the there will be a proper version of GTK for macos very soon. to let you
Maplin has blue LED Xmas lights. They're £29.99 and that gets you 120 blue LEDs. Thats 25p each! They say theyre discontinued but a friend has seen them still in stock.
I do agree that advertising is crutual to the development of the internet. A few years back it looked like everything would be based on micropayment but we got over that. Also I think that blocking off adverts when you brouse someones website is a little like stealing. I dont do it and I think its wrong to. But Popups are designed to be annoying. I delibretly stop using brands which use popups.
People who use popup ads should realise that they are overpricing their product. I cant put up with them so yes I do steal the websites content. I am happy to view adverts for good content but when they overprice themselves I resort to stealing. I also cant affoard some software and I also will steal that too. I justify this as I wouldnt have bought it anyway.
The problem here isnt with the whole human behaviour but its with the people who think they can change they way people behave for a few measely bucks.
Begs the question. For things that individuals use computers for, will there come a time when we will simply run out of things to use the computing power on. I remember when I got a 200MHz machine for my mother and I could not think of anything that she would want to do that would require anything faster. Unfortunately then came MS products which want more and more computing power and flash heavy internet.
So is it stupid of me to think that once I upgrate her machine to 1GHz she will not need anything more? Or will programmers be able to use even more power?
Currently I cant think what anyone using a computer for just writing and looking at the internet would need faster processors.
The Async tools page has the list of most tools we use. Ones we use most often are:
Balsa: make just about anything with it. Its personally quite VHDL like and very well mentained. Recently used to make a whole synthesized ARM compatable asynchronous chip. Comes with many flavours of back end (dual rail, single rail, safe and more).
Petrify: Make small components by describing each part transition by transition. (VSTGL) makes the process a little more graphical.
MINIMALIST: Simmilar to petrify but a little simpler to specify things.
The best way to learn these tools is to go to async 2003 where they have a tutorial of some of them.
There is also the book. It goes through a balsa tutorial.
The most important part of designing async stuff is to learn the different methods. Read the intoductions to some of these theses. They explain the basics. Before you start designing know what makes the system good or not.
This is my favorite example of asynchronnous logic. As the rat speeds up or slows down the chip compensates for it. Not often that you cant play with toy mice and call it research.
Oh wait i see what youre getting at. The software is used in the design process reather than at run time. If you use a tool like "balsa" to design then you can get race free implementations.
Well lets see. Average (reather than worst) case ferformance. Lewer latency. Lewer power consumption. Zero power consumption static state. Lower EMI. Security by being imune to clock glitch attacks and some power attacks what else do you want?
This is done using handshaking. Its a method of communication and ensuring that both partys are happy before moving onto the next piece of data. As for logic there are several methods to ensure that the result is ready before the latch switches. Using matched delays involves races but is safer as its nore local than a global clock. A better method is using things like dual rail and Delay insensitivety. This uses two wires to communidate data. Wiggle one for a one and the other for a zero. No races. Asynchronous isnt that weird you know. Fine an instruction might take a 1ns or 1.2ns depending on the data. It still follows the rules of sequencing.
1. it doesnt. The processor might be async but the code is just your original code. Amulet have been making asynchronous ARMs and I made an async MIPS with no need to alter the code. 2. Well it would use less power if thats what you want. Or go fatser or if the chip dentects a freese instruction it will staticly sit there waiting for an interrupt. 3. nope 4. C
There are two factors here. Firstly the on a glitch the synchronous part will take a certain period to return a wire low/high and resume its operation. By then it would be too late as the clock has gone. A asynchronous property called Delay Insensitivety which some designs have allows any wire to have any delay to rise or fall. So you can pick of any wire from your lets say ALU reeroute it outside the chip through a a telephone line to the other side of the world and back to the inside of the chip and the design would still work (maybe 1 ips but never the less the result would be correct) Secondly async releases much less EMI. The inside of your computer is riddled with radiations much nastyer than cosmic rays. Most chips are composed of millions of arials which pickup all these rays and make your chip malfunction. Fine you can slow down your clock and hope for the best but its better not to create them in the first place.
Yes they do. We had a demonstration board where if you sprayed some CFC sprey then it would increase in speed. Only a little because it was plastic packaging but it was quite cool. When testing it I left it running a dhrystone test overnight logging the results and as the office would cool down at night the chip went a little bit faster. as slow down by the morning. I think i might have invented the most complex thermomiter ever.
Nowdays we have good software which ensures you dont have race conditions. Infact this is where async becomes great as your data and clock is one big rase condition. The clock must be slower than data.
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It doesnt want to say what processor it is.
All I can see is that it is a RISC (what isnt) and has 15 x 32bit registers.
Sounds like an ARM ut why dont they say so.
I am about to work on an FPGA single chip computer. Taking an open MIPS(ish) core and connecting it up to some peripherals.
The best thing about its is that it will be completely open.
Opencomputer will start as an FPGA but I am hoping to find a good excuse to manufacture it along with an asynchronous version and make my self a fully open PC.
They do use the mips ISA too.
I own the yellow star project and the strange thing is that I got an email from a guy in a military university in china intrested in some details. He must have looked quite deeply into the design to ask them
And also every time you steal a song you make baby jesus cry.
So there.
Ther is also Phex.
Gtk Gnutella is my favorite and I believe you can compile it for MacosX. If not the there will be a proper version of GTK for macos very soon. to let you
Maplin has blue LED Xmas lights. They're £29.99 and that gets you 120 blue LEDs. Thats 25p each! They say theyre discontinued but a friend has seen them still in stock.
I do agree that advertising is crutual to the development of the internet. A few years back it looked like everything would be based on micropayment but we got over that.
Also I think that blocking off adverts when you brouse someones website is a little like stealing. I dont do it and I think its wrong to.
But Popups are designed to be annoying. I delibretly stop using brands which use popups.
People who use popup ads should realise that they are overpricing their product. I cant put up with them so yes I do steal the websites content. I am happy to view adverts for good content but when they overprice themselves I resort to stealing. I also cant affoard some software and I also will steal that too. I justify this as I wouldnt have bought it anyway.
The problem here isnt with the whole human behaviour but its with the people who think they can change they way people behave for a few measely bucks.
Begs the question. For things that individuals use computers for, will there come a time when we will simply run out of things to use the computing power on.
I remember when I got a 200MHz machine for my mother and I could not think of anything that she would want to do that would require anything faster.
Unfortunately then came MS products which want more and more computing power and flash heavy internet.
So is it stupid of me to think that once I upgrate her machine to 1GHz she will not need anything more? Or will programmers be able to use even more power?
Currently I cant think what anyone using a computer for just writing and looking at the internet would need faster processors.
Life is much more exciting with dyslexia.
Whats the point of having a committee where members openly bribe eachother?
I was under the impression that MIT was there to represent the people.
These IR keyboards have a fantastic ability to perform thesame transmition error time after time.
The Async tools page has the list of most tools we use.
Ones we use most often are:
Balsa: make just about anything with it. Its personally quite VHDL like and very well mentained. Recently used to make a whole synthesized ARM compatable asynchronous chip. Comes with many flavours of back end (dual rail, single rail, safe and more).
Petrify: Make small components by describing each part transition by transition. (VSTGL) makes the process a little more graphical.
MINIMALIST: Simmilar to petrify but a little simpler to specify things.
The best way to learn these tools is to go to async 2003 where they have a tutorial of some of them.
There is also the book. It goes through a balsa tutorial.
The most important part of designing async stuff is to learn the different methods. Read the intoductions to some of these theses. They explain the basics. Before you start designing know what makes the system good or not.
The first chapter of this explains a lot.
The thing is that async can nowdays be just as easily designed as sync. I have a great sync to async converter which improves speed by 30%.
This was back in the times when we didnt have decent enoufgh software to proove the chips would work yet.
This is my favorite example of asynchronnous logic.
As the rat speeds up or slows down the chip compensates for it.
Not often that you cant play with toy mice and call it research.
Oh wait i see what youre getting at. The software is used in the design process reather than at run time. If you use a tool like "balsa" to design then you can get race free implementations.
Well lets see.
Average (reather than worst) case ferformance.
Lewer latency.
Lewer power consumption.
Zero power consumption static state.
Lower EMI.
Security by being imune to clock glitch attacks and some power attacks
what else do you want?
This is done using handshaking. Its a method of communication and ensuring that both partys are happy before moving onto the next piece of data.
As for logic there are several methods to ensure that the result is ready before the latch switches. Using matched delays involves races but is safer as its nore local than a global clock.
A better method is using things like dual rail and Delay insensitivety. This uses two wires to communidate data. Wiggle one for a one and the other for a zero. No races.
Asynchronous isnt that weird you know. Fine an instruction might take a 1ns or 1.2ns depending on the data. It still follows the rules of sequencing.
Read first chapter of this for more details of race free computation.
I even made a method of converting synchronous designs into async ones automaticly.
Here at Manchester in the CS department is into this kind of thing.
They've even built a complete ARM compatible processors using async logic.
We did make one with an external company to use in their products.
I am currently working on making a nice fast MIPS design myself
1. it doesnt. The processor might be async but the code is just your original code. Amulet have been making asynchronous ARMs and I made an async MIPS with no need to alter the code.
2. Well it would use less power if thats what you want. Or go fatser or if the chip dentects a freese instruction it will staticly sit there waiting for an interrupt.
3. nope
4. C
There are two factors here.
Firstly the on a glitch the synchronous part will take a certain period to return a wire low/high and resume its operation. By then it would be too late as the clock has gone. A asynchronous property called Delay Insensitivety which some designs have allows any wire to have any delay to rise or fall. So you can pick of any wire from your lets say ALU reeroute it outside the chip through a a telephone line to the other side of the world and back to the inside of the chip and the design would still work (maybe 1 ips but never the less the result would be correct)
Secondly async releases much less EMI. The inside of your computer is riddled with radiations much nastyer than cosmic rays. Most chips are composed of millions of arials which pickup all these rays and make your chip malfunction. Fine you can slow down your clock and hope for the best but its better not to create them in the first place.
Yes they do. We had a demonstration board where if you sprayed some CFC sprey then it would increase in speed. Only a little because it was plastic packaging but it was quite cool.
When testing it I left it running a dhrystone test overnight logging the results and as the office would cool down at night the chip went a little bit faster. as slow down by the morning. I think i might have invented the most complex thermomiter ever.
Nowdays we have good software which ensures you dont have race conditions. Infact this is where async becomes great as your data and clock is one big rase condition. The clock must be slower than data.
retrosystem has a few cool PC cases from other computers.
Also here is my attempt at it with an Atari ST.
I'm gonna try the Apple II next.