New Hardware Company Dedicated to Squeak

Tom Poliquin poliquin at softcomp.com
Tue Apr 24 02:29:16 UTC 2001


David,

Guestimate is about $50 in quantity (1000 pcs) for the CPU, 4mb SDRAM,
128kb SRAM (12ns), the frame buffer, the two CPLD's (LCD ctllr,
kbd/mouse and smart media interface), and the power supply (turns
9vdc into everything (5v, 3.3v, -17 (sometimes +36v depending
on the LCD panel)).

We simulate gray scale on a monochrome panel .. the one
we used for the show is a $100 in small quantities ..

For prototyping quantities we get our LCDs from 

http://www.flat-panel.com

Most of their LCD panels are excess inventory ...

Hope this answers your question ..

Tom

"David P. Harris" wrote:
> 
> Hi-
> Any guestimate on a price for this unit (with or without the LCD)?
> David
> 
> Tom Poliquin wrote:
> 
> > Thanks for the responses ..
> >
> > Let me give you a little more data ..
> >
> > We are running Squeak 2.2 and ran #benchmark ..
> >
> > 835,000 bytecodes / sec ..
> >
> > We are changing to Hyperstone's new chip which
> > runs at 160Mhz (and still costs about $5-6 in qty)
> > so that should double that result.
> >
> > The Hyperstone has a single core that does both
> > the RISC operations and DSP operations (capable
> > of partial overlap).
> >
> > We want to implement Squeak primitives which
> > utilize the DSP .. (ahh.. not enough hours in
> > the day).
> >
> > It's not a morphic machine (we tried it and it's
> > very slow) but is quite smappy in MVC when developing
> > on it.
> >
> > We're trying to get a cheap platform .. all the logic
> > to control the LCD, Smart Media, Keyboard, and Mouse
> > is in cheap CPLDs .. for Squeak based Internet Appliances.
> > We actually develop on the platform too .. a side
> > benefit.
> >
> > Using Squeak (aside from loving Smalltalk) is great because
> > we can change anything from the lowliest latch in the CPLD hardware
> > thru drivers, primitives, and high level code .. to increase
> > performance.
> >
> > We're adding a modem (a soft one will come later) and
> > a touchscreen option ..
> >
> > Thanks for all the comments ..
> >
> > Pictures from the show are on the bottom of the
> > main page at
> >
> >    http://www.softcomp.com
> >
> > Tom
> >
> > Alan Kay wrote:
> > >
> > > Tim --
> > >
> > > At 11:26 AM -0700 4/20/01, Tim Rowledge wrote:
> > > >Hans-Martin Mosner <hmm at heeg.de> is widely believed to have written:
> > > >
> > > >>  do you have any performance data for the Squeak VM on that RISC core?
> > > >It's not going to be terribly fast at only 80MHz (ARM can do 400MHz for
> > > >ARM1020FE, ARM/XScale can do 1GHz ). And the mips/watt is quite good but
> > > >not exceptional (XSCALE claims 1.2gips/watt at 800MHz, 3+gips/watt at
> > > >400MHz, ARM1020 is around 1.5gips/watt including an array float
> > > >processor) . And variable length instructions doesn't really fit with
> > > >the claims of being 'strictly RISC' in the blurb.
> > > >
> > > >Nonetheless, it's a good bit of work to do all the code to support it
> > > >and get Squeak running - congratulations. Variety is the spice of life -
> > > but try explaining that to your spouse :-)
> > >
> > > She'll understand if you make the analogy to new clothes ....
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > >
> > > Alan





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