[ColorForth] Chuck Moore to do presentation on OKAD II in Color Forth 4/14

[Jeff Fox <fox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear ColorForth list readers:

krejasi JR wrote:
> Is the X18 done for iTV corporation?

No. Chuck mentioned that OKAD II and X18 mark his separation
from iTV in the first minute or so of his presentation. He 
said that they are nice people but that they showed no interest,
are working on other things, and have not paid him for a very
long time.  They laid off most of their employees in 1998 and
went in a new direction.

> And i was quite impressed with the speed numbers
> previous done in 0.8 and 0,6! The new 0,18 speed
> figures would be "very" interesting to hear more
> about!!

Some of the other interesting things are subjects that were
discussed in the old MISC list many times, the integration of
memory onto the chip and the integration of multiple processors
on a chip.  In addition to the raw speed of .18u the smaller
geometry also opens the door for these other factors that had
been on the list for years.  I wish I could say how many more
zeros it makes when the factors are combined.  All Chuck has
said publicly is that the estimates he gave last year were 
low.  He said the actual numbers are still proprietary info.
I am only free to repeat what he has made public, so we will
have to wait for him to release the actual numbers.

The only hardware that Chuck showed in the presentation was an
inverter which we had seen before.  However this time he showed
the line of source code that generates the inverter from a
description of the geometry of the components.  Chuck explained
how many of the CAD design changes were to match the GDSII
format restrictions and take maximum advantage of them.  In
the past he was manually manipulating the layout and converting
to CIF format for fabrication of the chips.  Now he is manipulating
a source description, but of the geometry not a schematic or netlist.

OKAD evolved in his sourceless programming phase and OKAD II is 
a complete rewrite in Forth.  Chuck does things like this because
he says that programming in Forth is easy.  Few other people go
back and completely rewrite all the software that they wrote for
a dozen years from scratch.  I guess even fewer people write their
own language, write their own OS, write their own VLSI CAD system,
and design their own chips with it.  It forms a feedback loop where
his ideas about programming are reflected in the chip designs and
the design tools.  It also makes what he is doing difficult to
understand by people who don't understand or don't want to understand
his ideas about his language.

Part 1 of the presentation is playing in the streaming video theater
at the present time. http://www.ultratechnology.com/rmvideo.htm
but as I have said it is mostly about OKAD II and there isn't much
about the X18 or the ColorForth.
 
Jeff Fox
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