[colorforth] ColorForth computer in FPGA

[Nick Maroudas <alice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Monday 26 Jan 2004, Mark Bottomley wrote:

> From what I can gather about Chuck's design, the "simplicity" is not
easily reproducible ....

To which on 26 Jan, Samuel Falvo replied:

> Wrong.  The simplicity is easily reproducible ....several people
implementing their own FPGA versions are clocking 25-100 MHz ...The FPGA
solutions use millions of transistors. Someone can easily come up with ...

----------------

Dear Sam,

Fascinating, could you expatiate on this topic of ColorForth being embodied
as a working MachineForth?  And post a few websites of those "several people"?
I stumbled on Bernd Paysan's only by accident:

          http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/b16.html

b16 - a "colorless ColorForth" processor in an FPGA, explicitly modelled
on Chuck Moore's c18 colorForth compiler:

          http://dec.bournemouth.ac.uk/forth/euro/ef01/moore01a.pdf

   The progress being that where Moore in Nov 2001 predicts 2400 Mips
"to be executed by a c18, when it exists", Paysan in Feb 2003
reports 25-100 MHz from an FPGA board that not only exists but which
(according to you, Sam) could be implemented by any modern 14 year old.

From Paysan's EuroForth presentation:  "The original concept (which
was sythesizible, and could execute a small sample program) was written in
an afternoon.  The current version really runs on a Altera Flex10K30E ...
board from Hans Eckes ...  about 600 logic cells ...The complete
development (excluding board ...) was done with free or zero cost tools.
... Verilog ... and Quartus"

Right now, March 2004, I see an Altera ACEX1K board with 576 logic elements,
complete with FTDI's USB programmer and free Quartus software, quoted at
a mouthwatering 99 Euro from Morph-IC.com

For the benefit any aspiring 14 year olds, play it again Sam :-)


Nick




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