Love ambitious projects like this! I wonder why the Unix standard doesn't start dropping old syscalls and standards? Does it have to be strictly backwards compatible?
Even if the standard dropped them, Linux would likely retain them.
Radiant Computer
61–70 of 165 posts
Re: Radiant Computer
#62I read clean slate architecture and "no baggage" and thought someone was designing a non Von Neuman architecture machine with a novel clockless asynchronous cpu, but nope, it's a custom OS running on RISC-V
Re: Radiant Computer
#63Re: Radiant Computer
#64The whole thing feels like it's generated by LLM. Some interesting sounding titbits here and there, no specifics ever, weird trance images.
Re: Radiant Computer
#65The exokernel makes this a nonstarter if you ever want to run untrusted code, as it implies hardware takeovers, compromised peripherals/TPMs/drives/etc. especially when it claims to be AI first.
Re: Radiant Computer
#66Honestly, this seems rambling and unfocused. It's like a grab-bag of recent-ish buzzwords. The task that has been set is gigantic. Despite that, they've decided to make it even harder by designing a new programming language on top of it (this seems to be all the work done to date). The hardware challenge alone is quite difficult. I don't know why that isn't the focus at this stage. It is as-if the author is suggestin…
In the OSdev world that's called an "Alta Lang" problem.
Re: Radiant Computer
#67Like clockwork every year or so someone emerges and says "I'm going to fix computing" and then it never happens. We're as mired in the status quo in computing as we are in politics, and I don't see any way out of it, really. Also the website is very low contrast (brighten up that background gray a bit!)
I have been having a lot of fun with PicoCalc. It's not targeted at end users but is fun for developers alike who want a taste of developing things from first principles. More than anything it can live independently from your other devices.
Re: Radiant Computer
#68I'm interested in the idea of a clean slate hardware/software system. I think being constrained to support existing hardware or software reduces opportunities for innovation on the other. I don't see that in this project. This isn't defined by a clean slate. It is defined by properties that it does not want to be. Off the top of my head I can think of a bunch of hardware architectures that would require all-new softw…
Clean slate designs with arbitrarily radical designs are easy when you don’t have to actually build them. There are reasons that current architecture are mostly similar to each other, having evolved over decades of learning and research. > Perhaps model where processing and memory are one, A:very simple core per 1k of SRAM per 64k of DRAM per megabytes of flash, To serve what goal? Such a design certainly wouldn’t be…
Perhaps not a true counterpoint, but there are systems like the GA144, an array of 144 Forth processors.
I think you're missing the point, and I don't think OP is "being critical of companies making practical designs."
Also, I think OP was imagining some kind of tree based topology, not connected graph since he said:
> ...but it would take talking through up to 15 intermediaries to communicate between any two arbitrary cores.
Re: Radiant Computer
#69I'm having a hard time following the through line on these first principles. Likely it's just a "me" problem because I have status quo system designs set in my head, but here are some ideas that seem conflicting to me: > Hardware and software must be designed as one In here, they describe an issue with computers is how they use layers of abstraction, and that actually hides complexity. But... > Computers should feel…
Yeah I felt the contradictions here too. Doesn’t the feeling of “magic” directly proceed from abstraction and non-tractability (or at least, as you say, not needing to understand every part of the system)?
>Doesn’t the feeling of “magic” directly proceed from abstraction and non-tractability
Yes, but also I think it can also have a kind of liminal impression of an internal logic.
Re: Radiant Computer
#70I like this type of stuff, but it cannot go anywhere. A real clean slate system, free from all crap we have piled on the things we use every day, must be something simple that cannot be interesting for the masses and must be understood and programmable by one person if things go bad. The only way I can see that is by creating something underpowered just to have fun and we already have that; actual (old and new) hardware, emulators and virtual cpus. As soon as it gets any volume or viability, it will be taken on by commercial entities that will eat it and the way to prevent it is always to make it obsolete to begin with.