Re: A Challenge to all takers...

["Ranando King" <rk@magictouchcorp.com>]

It's always good to hear disuasive opinions on my ideas just to make sure
I'm staying grounded. Now, that being said...

"josephoswaldgg@hotmail.com" <josephoswald@gmail.com> wrote in message
1110496938.185706.304210@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com">news:1110496938.185706.304210@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> You are very vague when you say "capabilities approaching that of
> modern PCs." Modern PC hardware is complicated.

You forgot the word "unnecessarily" between "is" and "complicated".

> To take just one example: video output for modern PCs is handled by
> highly integrated, high performance GPUs and video hardware on a fast
> bus. This hardware is highly specialized and proprietary, requiring
> complicated drivers and OS code to provide a usable API for
> applications programming.

Hmm. Perfect for a peripheral card, don't you think?

> You will not build this in your garage, or code it using a few
> engineers working on it as a hobby.

Actually, you're right. I will build this in the office in my house. ;-)

> Designing a new processor and bus is a possibly fun activity, but you
> will not achieve real hardware meeting modern standards without a
> company the size of, say, AMD. GHz IC design is not a hobby for
> tinkerers, anymore than building a Cray I was within the reach of
> hobbyists in the Apple IIgs era.

"Modern capabilities" is my target, not "modern standards". Modern standards
are, in many cases, unwieldy, proprietary, and painfully difficult to
acquire information on.

> Would you muse on an automotive group about building a new kind of car,
> presumably from scratch, with capabilities approaching a Honda Accord?

Not if they built it without needing tires, brake shoes/drums/rotors, and
gasoline. A car that somehow floats above the ground with some kind of
air-braking system, being completely electric, and having the same basic
capabilities as a Honda Accord, including energy efficiency, would be a
marvelous thing.

> What you *can* do is something like developing an interesting FPGA core
> with a novel CPU programming paradigm. It will have limited real-world
> performance, but has wide scope for creative thinking, and can actually
> be realized and used in demonstration projects. From a software point
> of view, it is conceivable to write a new API/runtime environment to
> allow new models of programming applications to run on a widely
> supported OS infrastructure like Linux.

You're not too far from what I intend to do. I'll use a Xilinx Spartan 3
FPGA with a homebrew core for the CPU and a handfull of low-density CPLD's
for the system bus design. The performance won't be as limited as you might
think if I do it properly. Of course, I've got almost no chance in hell of
crossing the 1GHz border, but seeing as how some people still use 500Mhz
machines, I've still got a chance of approaching that speed. Performance,
however, is measured on a completely different scale. About the new API
idea? I've already got a project in that direction that I'm working on. This
is different.

> The whole thing that made Apple II's accessible to hobbyists is that is
> was limited in its performance aspirations, but unlimited in its scope
> for creative uses. One could understand virtually everything about an
> OS that fit in 32k total ROM+RAM. You simply cannot understand as much
> about a system that barely fits in 32 MB. (And don't imagine for a
> second one could implement anything realistically "modern" in
> capability in less: software "bloat" is not a moral failing, it is the
> result of an engineering compromise, accepting lower resource
> efficiency in return for hugely increased capability.) The Apple II
> kind of limited performance+wide scope is now embodied in the PIC/FPGA
> realm, not the PC realm.

I would laugh, but it's not as convincing when you have to type out the
laughter...
You're right. Software bloat isn't a moral failing. It's a philosophical
failing, the idea that one has to compromise efficiency for functionality.
If you take a close look at the bottom line, when MS Windows 95/98 loads,
just in safe mode, it takes up several megs of memory. Note that none of the
specific drivers required to run the hardware have loaded. Look at GSOS. It
has about the same functionality as Windows in safe mode, yet GSOS is
considerably smaller (less than 1mb)

> The hobbyists who in 1900 would build an automobile are now building
> kit cars or tinkering with modifications to existing cars, or restoring
> old cars. This is because the modern auto industry has achieved such
> amazing efficiencies of scale that they can beat any hobbyist in *both*
> cost and performance. Modern PC hardware & software has achieved
> roughly the same thing.

You're correct, and the worst kind of correct at that: statistically
correct. Large businesses are more "cost efficient" because they divide
their development costs across several million sales. They achieve better
performance because they can afford to spend several million looking for
ways to improve performace. That being said, it does not exclude the
possibility of someone comming along and developing something better. Can
you say Delorian? That car's design is why cars these days are being built
with wider chassis. One of the major manufacturer's bought the guy out and
stopped production of the vehicle and put the design in a vault for a time.
Many of the good ideas used by various industries today are the designs of
someone working from home on a hobby project a decade or so ago.

> Good luck and have fun, but don't go tilting at those windmills.

Don't worry. If I decide I want to "go tilting at those windmills," I'll
make sure I knock them completely over.  ;-)

R.