On Tuesday 18 March 2003 02:24 pm, Alan Kay wrote:
> At 6:40 PM -0300 3/18/03, Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote:
> >I have been learning a lot trying to fit Smalltalk into 15
> > thousand gates (http://www.merlintec.com:8080/Hardware/Oliver)
> > and feel that my larger projects will be far better because of
> > this.
>
> Well, IIRC, the first ARM that Tim did so many neat things with was
> only about 25,000 transistors (and the Alto was a lot less than
> that).

It used to be that you had to work for a big company to be able to 
design high-performance processors and systems.

But today, with the average $1000 computer having considerably more 
power than the CAD workstations of just a few years ago, we can do 
these designs ourselves.

I wonder why we don't see more innovative processor/system solutions 
coming from individuals now that the (financial) cost of entry for 
making fast, capable systems is almost $0.

We can download free FPGA/CPLD design tools capable of dealing with 
large devices, and the devices themselves are pretty cheap.

We can get free PC board design software.

We can get prototype PC boards made for around $33 each.

For instance, using the free ISE Webpack from Xilinx (Altera and 
Lattice also have free software like this) you can program a device 
like the Virtex XCV300E, which has:

32x48 CLB array
6912 logic cells
411944 system gates
131072 max. block RAM bits
98304 max. distributed RAM bits

and is available in non-BGA forms (i.e. ones that can be 
hand-soldered). You can buy them in single quanties for less than 
$250.

Take one of these, connect it to some fast DRAM and I/O, and off you 
go...

I know Jecel is doing interesting work; why don't we see more 
Smalltalk machines coming out of peoples' garages?

-- 
Ned Konz
http://bike-nomad.com
GPG key ID: BEEA7EFE