RE: VLSI CAD was Re: Unified Forth

["John Griessen" <john_g@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks for more on low fat computer design outside the usual
large team structure, Jeff.  I'm looking forward
to getting a MUP21 board, and possibly working with you on testing
boards for the F21 chips.  I did not get a reply yet, but I did not mention
my PCB board design offer on the list so you may not
have seen it.  I'll send copies to jfox@ricochet.net.

John Griessen
Austin TX


> -----Original Message-----
> OKAD is to Verilog what Chuck's Forth is to more social programming
> languages. You can limit what people can do so that they can be a small
> replaceable component in a project and the majority of their work and
> many of their tools will relate to coordinating work.  Chuck's
> idea of Forth is to get all restrictions out of the way so that one
> person can have complete control over hardware or software design.
>
> OKAD does do less than the big expensive tools.  But OKAD also does things
> that those tools can't do.  They can provide support to limit the scope
> of what people can do so that many people can work on the same design
> at the same time.  They provide support to let the software do lots of
> things the way everyone else does it.  The user doesn't work with
> solid state
> physics in their software, they work with high level representations
> and let the machine make standard and conservative transformations
> of the representation.
.
.
.
> Chuck has said that adding more transistors can't make things faster
> because it just adds more gate delays.  I know if you add a bunch more
> transistors serially it does get slower and you have to use pipelines
> and caches and branch prediction and other very expensive techniques
> to regain the lost speed.  Whether he is talking about transistors or
> code Chuck would say that what you take out is more important than
> what you put in.
>
> > I'm not the first person to note the irony that iTV has VLSI
> designers using
> > VHDL and/or Verilog.
.
.
.
> According to Chuck the conventional tools have added almost nothing to
> the project other than perceived credibility to some investors and
> partners.
>
.
.
. I do like the idea of a simple program like the game
> Rocky's Boot with a print FPGA button that could be given away.
>
> I always liked the hands on interactive nature of Forth.  When working
> with a real Forth system there is a sense of doing something simple
> like playing with blocks.  I find playing with the circuits and
> simulations
> in OKAD very much like that.  .
.
.

> Since all the menus and features in OKAD were documented in More on Forth
> Engines Volume 16 along with the transistor models and simulation
> equations that Chuck was using at the time other people can experiment
> with the OKAD approach if the wish.  I did get permission from Dr. Ting
> to publish part of some of his books at my web site and I will post
> more OKAD information.
>
> Jeff Fox   Ultra Technology
> www.UltraTechnology.com
>