[colorforth] OT: Attn: Jeff Fox Re: Rajit Manohar

[vaded@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Mr. Fox,

I was wondering if you were familiar with the processors designed by
Rajit Manohar, and if you are, could you briefly give your opinion of
them and compare them to the work yourself and Moore et al are working
with?

I am in a forum dialog that has gone beyond my ability to comment:

-----

A: Chuck Moore has, as far as I am able to discern, created such a
radically faster and lower power chip that is without peer or
competition.



G: Why without peer or competition? As far as I can tell, the source of
the gains is asynchronous and parallel operation. Caltech computer
science has been pursuing these techniques for decades. As I have
written for some time, it is becoming mandatory because a single clock
pulse can no longer propagate across an entire chip within the switching
delay of transistor circuitry. 

So I am all for asynch--throw away the clock like Easy Rider--but every
attempt so far to achieve fully asynchronous computing devices,
optimized for speed and low power, suffers rigidities and programming
idiosyncrasies that thwart its adoption. Andrew Lines of Fulcrum made a
heroic attempt, but Fulcrum is now focusing on networking PHYs, I
believe. 

Moore's SEAForth system seems to entail adopting new architectures, a
new language, new testing and debugging methods, and new modes of
parallelism. It requires the world to adapt to it rather than it
adapting to the world. At the end of the day, the advantages (20 GigaOps
with a focus on Fourier transforms that can be performed by other
special purpose devices) are not sufficiently overwhelming to enforce
acceptance. 

A better approach comes from Rajit Manohar of Achronix, a Carver Mead
protege who built the first asynchronous microprocessor based on the
MIPS instruction set and has focused on creating compilers that allow
the translation of ordinary ASICs to his asychronous field programmable
gate arrays. Rajit and Carver will both be at Telecosm, and if you are
intrigued, we might be able to work out a student discount or whatever. 

GG

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