Programming a 144-computer Chip to Minimize Power (2013)
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Re: Programming a 144-computer Chip to Minimize Power (2013)
#2Recorded at Strange Loop 2013. Please add (2013) tag.
Edit: https://thestrangeloop.com/2013/programming-a-144-computer-c...
Re: Programming a 144-computer Chip to Minimize Power (2013)
#3I really love greenarrays and that entire social circle. It's an older group of folks that bought a historical house in Wyoming and do chip design, programming, everything with their own home-brew minimal set of software. It's an alternative universe of programming. It's almost a software and hardware design religion. I think everyone should know about it and that it's possible to work this way, even if you wouldn't personally want to. You may even find some of their arguments compelling. I love it.
Re: Programming a 144-computer Chip to Minimize Power (2013)
#4Architecture and further details on the GreenArray chip:
http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/index.html#GA1...
Re: Programming a 144-computer Chip to Minimize Power (2013)
#5I really love greenarrays and that entire social circle. It's an older group of folks that bought a historical house in Wyoming and do chip design, programming, everything with their own home-brew minimal set of software. It's an alternative universe of programming. It's almost a software and hardware design religion. I think everyone should know about it and that it's possible to work this way, even if you wouldn't…
> I think everyone should know about it
I would love to! Any further links to the life/work-style of said group?
Re: Programming a 144-computer Chip to Minimize Power (2013)
#6Do they need to optimize for reduced memory/communication patterns? Or is that going too far
AFAIK, the memory-communication power can increase by orders of magnitude if u go off-core, off-chip, off-cache, etc.
Re: Programming a 144-computer Chip to Minimize Power (2013)
#7Architecture and further details on the GreenArray chip: http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/index.html#GA1...
Do they need to optimize for reduced memory/communication patterns? Or is that going too far
AFAIK, the memory-communication power can increase by orders of magnitude if u go off-core, off-chip, off-cache, etc.
Re: Programming a 144-computer Chip to Minimize Power (2013)
#8I really love greenarrays and that entire social circle. It's an older group of folks that bought a historical house in Wyoming and do chip design, programming, everything with their own home-brew minimal set of software. It's an alternative universe of programming. It's almost a software and hardware design religion. I think everyone should know about it and that it's possible to work this way, even if you wouldn't…
> I think everyone should know about it I would love to! Any further links to the life/work-style of said group?
I think it's more or less a continuation/extension of the ideas of FORTH. You should read their app notes and read the writing of Chuck Moore, Greg Bailey, Jeff Fox, Charley Shattuck, and other FORTH people to understand the ideas. I've also found very friendly to talk to over the phone.
Re: Programming a 144-computer Chip to Minimize Power (2013)
#9I really love greenarrays and that entire social circle. It's an older group of folks that bought a historical house in Wyoming and do chip design, programming, everything with their own home-brew minimal set of software. It's an alternative universe of programming. It's almost a software and hardware design religion. I think everyone should know about it and that it's possible to work this way, even if you wouldn't…
> I think everyone should know about it I would love to! Any further links to the life/work-style of said group?
I just warn you... I think the impulse is to look at this software and think "ok this stuff is kinda rough around the edges. I know, I'm gonna write my own IDE and Compiler and all that in my own language of preference, and use that instead." Do not do this. Learn their tools, their way of doing things, and really try to immerse yourself if you want to learn. Write your own FORTH. It really is a religion with strict opposition to unnecessary abstraction and complexity to a degree that will put most contemporary programmers off balance. If you go in with an open mind, you'll get a lot out of it.
Re: Programming a 144-computer Chip to Minimize Power (2013)
#10Reminds me a lot of the Parallax Propeller: many simple cores optimized for bit-banging I/O and programmable logic. Of course this is much lower power and has many more cores.
I think that many core architectures can actually be simpler to program in an embedded context than the traditional single core systems. It's akin to a hardware implementation of the actor model rather than an interrupt state machine or interrupt event loop. Being able to dedicate cores to single I/O tasks means you can bitbang almost anything. Here's HDMI running in a few lines of code on a Propeller 2 with no external components but the HDMI connector: https://forums.parallax.com/discussion/comment/1475075/#Comm...