From: Matt Lawrence <matt@...>
Date: 2005-06-10T07:50:21+09:00
Subject: Re: python/ruby benchmark.

On Fri, 10 Jun 2005, Phil Tomson wrote:

> Well, maybe not so new.  There was a Lisp machine back in the 80's as I
> recall.  There was also a Forth chip made by Chuck Moore back then too.
> Of course there are also HW implementations of the JVM (PicoJava).

Don't forget the SOAR (Smalltalk On A RISC) project.  There was even a 
_very_ interesting book published about it.

Also, given the distance (in clock cycles) between main memory and the 
CPU, I'm expecting to see a programmable microcode design come out.  Such 
things were built in the 70's & 80's with some success.  And, being a fan 
of Forth, using it as the internal microcode could be really interesting.

> Now that we've got fairly inexpensive FPGAs (like the Spartan 3 family
> from Xilinx) it's possible that you can do this sort of thing in FPGAs.
> It's certainly an intriguing idea.

I would enjoy learning how to design with these.  And, I would love to 
write a bunch of tools in Ruby for developing with them.

-- Matt
Nothing great was ever accomplished without _passion_