From:  Dean Swan at MITEL on 07/14/2000 11:28 AM

Alan,

     While I'm used to buying processor evaluation boards in this price range
and higher at work, I think one of Mark's points about the TINI is that it is
very inexpensive (i.e. $50 in single peice quantities).


Mark,

     I think it would be challenging to port Squeak to the TINI board.  The
processor can directly address up to 4MB of off chip memory, and it is basically
a hopped up 8051 eight bit microcontroller.  Clocked at 40 MHz, you'll get 10
MIPS (an instruction being defined as an 8051instruction).  Using the on chip
arithmetic accelerator, you can get around 1.5 M 16x16 bit multiplies per
second.
The 8051 is an accumulator based architecture, and said accumulator is only 8
bits, so it may present a serious performance bottleneck.

     I think memory bandwidth is probably Squeak's single biggest demand of a
target architecture, and on the TINI you'll be topping out at about 10 to 15
megabytes per second.

     I could probably be persuaded to contribute to an effort to port Squeak to
the TINI, but I think it's more than a one person job if you want to get it done
in a fairly short timespan.


                                              -Dean Swan
                                              dean_swan at mitel.com





Alan Kay <Alan.Kay at disney.com> on 07/14/2000 07:06:27 AM

Please respond to squeak at cs.uiuc.edu

To:   squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
cc:   squeak at cs.uiuc.edu (bcc: Dean Swan/Ogd/Mitel)

Subject:  Re: Squeak on a TINI?



We got a few, and they are currently about $3K per. But you get a lot
of options in the kit. It's the best thing of its kind that I've seen.

Cheers,

Alan

------

At 11:56 AM +0200 7/14/00, Bruce ONeel wrote:
>Hi,
>   More info here:
>
>http://developer.intel.com/design/strong/quicklist/eval-plat/sa-1100me.h
>tm
>
>Any idea what this costs?
>
>cheers
>
>bruce
>
>Alan Kay <Alan.Kay at disney.com> wrote:
>>  Mark --
>>
>>  Check out the Intel StrongArm 1110 kit -- perfect for a class and it
>>  really rocks!
>>
>>  Cheers,
>>
>>  Alan
>>
>>  At 10:41 PM -0400 7/13/00, Mark Guzdial wrote:
>>  >Has anyone explored porting Squeak to a TINI board?
>>  >
>>  >   http://www.ibutton.com/TINI/
>>  >
>>  >
>>  >It sounds like it's possible to program the critter in C, even
>>  >though Java is resident:
>>  >
>>  >     http://www.jguru.com/jguru/faq/view.jsp?EID=48560
>>  >
>>  >There is some interest in using Squeak in an embedded systems class
>>  >here that uses the TINI board.
>>  >
>>  >Thanks for any leads!
>>  >Mark
>>  >--------------------------
>>  >Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA 30332-0280
>>  >Associate Professor - Learning Sciences & Technologies.
>>  >Collaborative Software Lab - http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/csl/
>>  >(404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial at cc.gatech.edu
>>  >http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html