And if you design with VHDL or Verilog and a synthesizer this will be
more software design than hardware design. There is no clear separation
between hardware and software.

By the way there are some open source processor on the web:
http://opencollector.org/Whyfree/oekonux03.html
http://www.opencores.org/projects/
And google could certainly give ou a bunch of other open CPU

Alain


Le Mercredi 19 mars 2003, à 05:54 , Ned Konz a écrit :

> 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
>
>