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Project Oberon 2013 on RISC-V

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Re: Project Oberon 2013 on RISC-V

#31

Post by wrycoder »

johndoe0815 wrote: post #23
eterps wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is interesting about Oberon is that it is a complete (i.e. OS + compiler + HW) usable system that can be understood in its entirety by a single human being within one lifetime. As far as I know it's also the only system currently in existence that fullfills that promise.

One interesting point about Modula and Oberon is that these systems were not only the topics of academic research (which are often quickly abandoned when the related project ends). Rather, the systems were used at ETH to educate generations of students over the period of more than a decade, running on custom-designed hardware from day one (the Ceres workstations). We arguably spend too much time teaching our students…

And yet ETH has virtually abandoned Oberon. The younger people associated with the project had to move elsewhere to continue, it seems. That’s a shame.

Re: Project Oberon 2013 on RISC-V

#32

Post by pjmlp »

a9h74j wrote: post #27
pjmlp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides what others have written. It is a complete single user graphical workstation OS, written in a GC enabled systems programming language. Niklaus Wirth got his inspiration out of Mesa/Cedar during his second sabbatical at Xerox PARC (during his first one he ended up creating Modula-2 inspired by Mesa). You can see what Mesa/Cedar was capable of by checking this videos, "Eric Bier Demonstrates Cedar" https://www.…

With a view to a portable environment, I was thinking earlier today that it would be nice to have a second, all-in-one application to use over different OS environments, to complement a modern browser. Something with a file explorer, editor, support for scripts -- and possibly extensions. It appears non-native Oberon could be a fit to that; the lack of an up-to-date browser would not be a weakness.

For that I would actually advise something like Smalltalk.

https://pharo.org/

Re: Project Oberon 2013 on RISC-V

#33

Post by pjmlp »

wrycoder wrote: post #31
johndoe0815 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One interesting point about Modula and Oberon is that these systems were not only the topics of academic research (which are often quickly abandoned when the related project ends). Rather, the systems were used at ETH to educate generations of students over the period of more than a decade, running on custom-designed hardware from day one (the Ceres workstations). We arguably spend too much time teaching our students…

And yet ETH has virtually abandoned Oberon. The younger people associated with the project had to move elsewhere to continue, it seems. That’s a shame.

It is hard to keep the ball rolling when the project drivers are no longer around.

I expect the same to happen to Linux when those of us that grew up with it, Linus and his gang are all gone.

Whoever comes next will just drive it into something else.

You already see this with the uprising of MIT licensed POSIX clones for IoT devices, or most userspace innovations being driven by a single company.

Regarding ETHZ, at least Active Oberon seems to still be being worked on

https://lists.inf.ethz.ch/pipermail/oberon/2019/013611.html

Re: Project Oberon 2013 on RISC-V

#34

Post by pjmlp »

carapace wrote: post #21
ducktective wrote: post #13

Can anyone give a quick summary of what makes Oberan OS interesting? Is it an RTOS? A microkernerl? What's distinctive about it?

Oberon OS plus the "Gadgets" widget lib is unequaled in UI design in my opinion.

Not unequaled, it has a certain Amiga OS feel actually.

System 3

https://www.progtools.org/compilers/tutorials/oberon/oberon-...

Amiga Workbench 3.0

https://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/wb_30.html

However I do get your point.

Re: Project Oberon 2013 on RISC-V

#36

Post by butterisgood »

alexisread wrote: post #17
johndoe0815 wrote: post #2

Hi, this port of Niklaus Wirth's Project Oberon ( http://www.projectoberon.com ) to RISC-V (rv32im) is the semester project of my student Rikke Solbjørg at the department of computer science at NTNU in Trondheim/Norway. The system currently runs in a version of Peter de Wachter's emulator modified to use a RISC-V CPU emulation instead of Wirth's RISC5 (now isn't that confusing? ;-)). Rikke's announcement on the Obero…

It's great to see Oberon still being worked on! Slightly unrelated, but I was wondering if Composita was being used or looked at still ( http://concurrency.ch/Content/publications/Blaeser_Component... )? I know that it and A2 are more complex than Oberon, but a riscV version of those would be awesome, particularly the concept of managed memory without GC.

A2 gets updates every few months.

I am hoping to be able to work on a more “native” UX for it for MacOS rather than the xorg/X11 based one.

There’s ARM support already too but I don’t think M1 works in any sense yet, so I guess I’ll have to use Bonjour2 for now.

Fun stuff!

Re: Project Oberon 2013 on RISC-V

#37

Post by cfbsoftware »

johndoe0815 wrote: post #6
NonEUCitizen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much memory does it require to run?

The original Wirth RISC5 version runs in 1 MB RAM on an ancient Xilinx FPGA board. The RISC-V binaries are a bit larger, but still runs in 1 MB (but more is possible). A bit too large for typical block RAM sizes of affordable FPGAs, unfortunately. Some details on the port and the binary size differences can be found in the project report: https://github.com/solbjorg/oberon-riscv/blob/master/report....

We (CFB Software) recently managed to squeeze the full Project Oberon into 512 KB of BRAM on Digilent's Arty7-100T and NexysA7-100T boards. It is sufficient to recompile the entire system on itself.

Re: Project Oberon 2013 on RISC-V

#39

Post by ducktective »

pjmlp wrote: post #33
wrycoder wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet ETH has virtually abandoned Oberon. The younger people associated with the project had to move elsewhere to continue, it seems. That’s a shame.

It is hard to keep the ball rolling when the project drivers are no longer around. I expect the same to happen to Linux when those of us that grew up with it, Linus and his gang are all gone. Whoever comes next will just drive it into something else. You already see this with the uprising of MIT licensed POSIX clones for IoT devices, or most userspace innovations being driven by a single company. Regarding ETHZ, at l…

You are talking about likes of Zephyr or NuttX?

Re: Project Oberon 2013 on RISC-V

#40

Post by pjmlp »

ducktective wrote: post #39
pjmlp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard to keep the ball rolling when the project drivers are no longer around. I expect the same to happen to Linux when those of us that grew up with it, Linus and his gang are all gone. Whoever comes next will just drive it into something else. You already see this with the uprising of MIT licensed POSIX clones for IoT devices, or most userspace innovations being driven by a single company. Regarding ETHZ, at l…

You are talking about likes of Zephyr or NuttX?

Among others, those aren't the only contenders.
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