From: ptkwt@... (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2005-06-10T10:20:28+09:00
Subject: Re: python/ruby benchmark.

In article <Pine.LNX.4.61.0506091805170.7377@oberon.technoronin.com>,
Matt Lawrence  <matt@technoronin.com> wrote:
>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.

You can get the Xilinx Spartan 3 starter kit for $99. Includes a board 
with a reasonably good sized FPGA on it.  The software is even free 
(Webkit they call it).  It's pretty easy to get into FPGA design these 
days.  Also check out the newsgroup: comp.arch.fpga

As far as writing a bunch of Ruby tools for this sort of thing: I'd like 
to do that too.

Phil