I'm not sure what the computer architecture was, but I recall the engine controller for the V22 Osprey (AE1107) used odd formats like 11 bit floating point numbers, 7 bit ints, etc.
Ask HN: Weirdest Computer Architecture?
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Re: Ask HN: Weirdest Computer Architecture?
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was released a decade and a half too early for that, and at the time it was too weird and awkward to use to stay relevant once CUDA caught on.
This. CUDA handles a lot of overhead that the dev is responsible for on the Cell architecture. Makes you wonder what PS3 games would have looked like with CUDA-style abstraction of the Cell's capabilities
I don't know the details of CUDA, so this may not be a good comparison, but there were efforts to abstract Cell's weirdness. It wasn't for the PS3, but for supercomputers. In particular the Roadrunner which had both Operteron and Cell processors. It was called CellFS and was based on the 9p protocol from Plan 9. It says there was 10-15% overhead, which may not have worked for PS3 games.
https://fmt.ewi.utwente.nl/media/59.pdf
https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/546-mirtc...
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest Computer Architecture?
#73Physical Substrate: Carbon / Water / Sodium
Computation Theory: Cognitive Processes
Smallest parts: Neurons
Largest parts: Brains
Lowest level language: Proprietary
First abstractions of programming: Bootstrapped / Self-learning
Software architecture: Maslow's Theory of Needs
User Interface: Sight, Sound
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest Computer Architecture?
#74Here are some architectures that might interest you. Note these are links that lead to rabbit holes. 1. Transmeta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta 2. Cell processor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(processor) 3. VAX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX (Was unusual for it's time, but many concepts have since been adopted) 4. IBM zArchitecture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/Architecture (This stuff is comp…
> Transmeta Whatever happened to them ... They had a somewhat serious go at being "third wheel" back in the early 2000s, mid 1990s? PS. Actually considered getting a Crusoe machine back in the day ...
i did get a sony picturebook with a transmeta processor. the problem was that as a consumer i didn't notice anything special about it. for transmeta to make it they would have had to either be cheaper or faster or use less power to be attractive for consumer devices.
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest Computer Architecture?
#75IBM 1401. One of the weirdest ISAs I've ever read about, with basically human readable machine code thanks to BCD.
Yes, it had a variable word length - a number was a string of decimal digits of any length, with a terminator at the end, kind of like a C character string.
Machine code including instructions and data was all printable characters, so you could punch an executable program right onto a card, no translation needed. You could put a card in the reader, press a button, and the card image would be read into memory and executed, no OS needed. Some useful utilities -- list a card deck on the printer, copy a card deck to tape -- fit on a single card.
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest Computer Architecture?
#76Here are some architectures that might interest you. Note these are links that lead to rabbit holes. 1. Transmeta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta 2. Cell processor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(processor) 3. VAX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX (Was unusual for it's time, but many concepts have since been adopted) 4. IBM zArchitecture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/Architecture (This stuff is comp…
> Transmeta Whatever happened to them ... They had a somewhat serious go at being "third wheel" back in the early 2000s, mid 1990s? PS. Actually considered getting a Crusoe machine back in the day ...
They had a great plan, that was promising, and Intel was focused entirely on the pentium-4, which had high clocks for bragging rights, long pipeline (related to the high clocks), and high power usage.
However between Transmeta's idea and shipping a product Intel's Israel location came up with the Intel Core series. MUCH more energy efficienct, much better performance per clock, and ideal for lower power platforms like laptops.
Sadly transmeta's no longer had a big enough advantage, sales decreased, and I heard many of the engineers ended up at Nvidia, which did use some of their ideas in a nvidia product.
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest Computer Architecture?
#77Here are some architectures that might interest you. Note these are links that lead to rabbit holes. 1. Transmeta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta 2. Cell processor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(processor) 3. VAX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX (Was unusual for it's time, but many concepts have since been adopted) 4. IBM zArchitecture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/Architecture (This stuff is comp…
For those really wanting to dig into z/Architecture: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/module_1678991624569/pdf/SA22-78... > The Wikipedia link has it as its first reference, but it's honestly worth linking directly here. I highly recommend trying to get someone to give you a TSO/E account and picking up HLASM.
I put MVS 3.8J in a Docker image: https://github.com/skissane/mvs38j
Not TSO/E rather just plain old TSO. Not HLASM rather its predecessor Assembler F (IFOX00). Still, if you get the hang of the 1970s version, the 2020s version is just adding stuff. And some of the stuff it is adding is less unfamiliar (like Unix and Java)
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest Computer Architecture?
#78I'm not sure what the computer architecture was, but I recall the engine controller for the V22 Osprey (AE1107) used odd formats like 11 bit floating point numbers, 7 bit ints, etc.
Why past tense? Does the Osprey no longer use that engine or computer?
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest Computer Architecture?
#79Here are some architectures that might interest you. Note these are links that lead to rabbit holes. 1. Transmeta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta 2. Cell processor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(processor) 3. VAX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX (Was unusual for it's time, but many concepts have since been adopted) 4. IBM zArchitecture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/Architecture (This stuff is comp…
I wouldn't say the VAX was unusual even though it was a pathfinder in that it showed what 32-bit architectures were going to look like. In the big picture the 386, 68040, SPARC and other chips since then have looked a lot like a VAX, particularly in how virtual memory works. There's no fundamental problem with getting a modern Unix to run on a VAX except for all the details. Z is definitely interesting from it's hist…
> 24 bit micros existed in the 1980s such as the 286 but I never had one that was straightforward to program in 24 bit mode
Making clear that we are talking about 24-bit physical or virtual addressing (machines with a 24-bit data word we’re quite rare, mainly DSPs, also some non-IBM mainframes like SDS 940):
286’s 16-bit protected mode was heavily used by Windows 3.x in Standard mode. And even though 386 Enhanced Mode used 32-bit addressing, from an application developer viewpoint it was largely indistinguishable from 286 protected mode, prior to Win32s. And then Windows NT and 95 changed all that.
286’s protected mode was also heavily used by earlier DOS extenders, OS/2 1.x, earlier versions of NetWare and earlier versions of Unix variants such as Xenix. Plus 32-bit operating systems such as Windows 9x/Me/NT/2000/XP/etc and OS/2 2.x+ still used it for backward compatibility when running older 16-bit software (Windows 3.x and OS/2 1.x)
Other widely used CPU architectures with 24-bit addressing included anything with a Motorola 68000 or 68010 (32-bit addressing was only added with the 68020 onwards, while the 68012 had 31-bit addressing). So that includes early versions of classic MacOS, AmigaOS, Atari TOS - and also Apple Lisa, various early Unix workstations, and umpteen random operating systems which ran under 68K which you may have never heard of (everything from CP/M-68K to OS/9 to VERSAdos to AMOS/L).
ARM1 (available as an optional coprocessor for the BBC Micro) and ARM2 (used in the earliest RISC OS systems) were slightly more than 24-bit, with 26-bit addressing. And some late pre-XA IBM mainframes actually used 26-bit physical addressing despite only having 24-bit virtual addresses. Rather similar to how 32-bit Intel processors ended up with 36-bit physical addressing via PAE
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest Computer Architecture?
#80From the creator of Forth
https://youtu.be/0PclgBd6_Zs
144 small computers in a grid that can communicate with each other