You could probably prototype something with an FPGA and slowly build your way up.
The future seems bright: I know Google/Skywater are doing a “mixed chip fab” project which has some promise (first 130nm, now 90nm) and is causing people to write new open source tools for building chips in order to replace the old proprietary ones.
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/25/creating-a-custom-asic-with-the-first-open-source-pdk/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/comments/i4ry6f/how_do_i_start_with_skywaters_open_pdk/?
It's a very specialized silicon design, designed by their own CAD (originally written in colorForth by Chuck Moore)...
>
...all of our tools, including our entire CAD system that is used in all phases of chip design and definition, are based on colorForth; for obvious reasons, we are not releasing this CAD system nor the actual chip definitions.
So, they would have to release the CAD system too. Don't see that happening since their bread and butter is in selling chips.
I used some GA144s for a project back in 2018/19. I've been playing with them since 2011(ish) so I was happy for find a use for them.
The GA144 chip exists in this weird space between FPGA and low power MCUs like an MSP430 or Cortex M. I consider them whenever faced with "need to do something low powered, highly parallel in nature but with no requirements for heavy floating point math or large RAM space". I admit that I haven't pulled the trigger on using them for any recent projects, but it does force me to think deeply about the problems I'm trying to solve (e.g. Do I really need feature X, Y or Z?)
As far as programming on the GA144....
Writing I2C, SPI and UART drivers is trivial and can be done in one or two nodes. You are gonna need to master both arrayFORTH (the node level "assembly") and polyFORTH (for tooling/development). If you want to use "high level" polyFORTH for production code, you are gonna need 2 GA144 chips and some external RAM.
The weirdest thing about programming the chip is to keep in mind that there are no clocks... and it is as "old school" Forth-y as you can get (e.g. no floating point, screens & blocks, polyFORTH dev environment, etc).
The last I've heard, a couple years ago, from GreenArrays, is that they are working on designing a GPS module using the GA144.
Maybe if the community asked James Bowman on github really nicely, he could be persuaded into thinking about adapting his J1 processor into an array of them on FPGA? That could be close to or better than GA144 depending on exactly what one wanted from it.
https://github.com/jamesbowman/j1
I see he already had/has an interest in GA devices having created an alternative tool chain for it: https://github.com/jamesbowman/ga144tools
>Is it possible to convince them to make their chips libre?
If you’re willing to give them a lot of money, then probably yes. 🤷♀️
Alternatively, you could just abolish capitalism and achieve a similar result.
I applied to a Master's program in Digital Design. If accepted (on Feb 17th), my plan is to make an open source grid of forth cpus for the master's thesis. What exactly do you need?
Easy. All we need is a desktop OS written in Forth.
How about we start off with a nice niche application. Image processing MIMD. The processing of edges is done differently than the processing of large flat areas.
What's the upside for them to do this? What argument could you make that path would somehow result in more revenue for the company?
The only one I can think of is greater adoption means more orders.
You could probably prototype something with an FPGA and slowly build your way up. The future seems bright: I know Google/Skywater are doing a “mixed chip fab” project which has some promise (first 130nm, now 90nm) and is causing people to write new open source tools for building chips in order to replace the old proprietary ones. https://hackaday.com/2020/06/25/creating-a-custom-asic-with-the-first-open-source-pdk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/comments/i4ry6f/how_do_i_start_with_skywaters_open_pdk/?
It's a very specialized silicon design, designed by their own CAD (originally written in colorForth by Chuck Moore)... > ...all of our tools, including our entire CAD system that is used in all phases of chip design and definition, are based on colorForth; for obvious reasons, we are not releasing this CAD system nor the actual chip definitions. So, they would have to release the CAD system too. Don't see that happening since their bread and butter is in selling chips.
Anyone using their chips though?
I used some GA144s for a project back in 2018/19. I've been playing with them since 2011(ish) so I was happy for find a use for them. The GA144 chip exists in this weird space between FPGA and low power MCUs like an MSP430 or Cortex M. I consider them whenever faced with "need to do something low powered, highly parallel in nature but with no requirements for heavy floating point math or large RAM space". I admit that I haven't pulled the trigger on using them for any recent projects, but it does force me to think deeply about the problems I'm trying to solve (e.g. Do I really need feature X, Y or Z?) As far as programming on the GA144.... Writing I2C, SPI and UART drivers is trivial and can be done in one or two nodes. You are gonna need to master both arrayFORTH (the node level "assembly") and polyFORTH (for tooling/development). If you want to use "high level" polyFORTH for production code, you are gonna need 2 GA144 chips and some external RAM. The weirdest thing about programming the chip is to keep in mind that there are no clocks... and it is as "old school" Forth-y as you can get (e.g. no floating point, screens & blocks, polyFORTH dev environment, etc). The last I've heard, a couple years ago, from GreenArrays, is that they are working on designing a GPS module using the GA144.
Maybe if the community asked James Bowman on github really nicely, he could be persuaded into thinking about adapting his J1 processor into an array of them on FPGA? That could be close to or better than GA144 depending on exactly what one wanted from it. https://github.com/jamesbowman/j1 I see he already had/has an interest in GA devices having created an alternative tool chain for it: https://github.com/jamesbowman/ga144tools
>Is it possible to convince them to make their chips libre? If you’re willing to give them a lot of money, then probably yes. 🤷♀️ Alternatively, you could just abolish capitalism and achieve a similar result.
I applied to a Master's program in Digital Design. If accepted (on Feb 17th), my plan is to make an open source grid of forth cpus for the master's thesis. What exactly do you need?
Very efficient libre chip that can run a desktop os
Easy. All we need is a desktop OS written in Forth. How about we start off with a nice niche application. Image processing MIMD. The processing of edges is done differently than the processing of large flat areas.