Re: [colorforth] Intellasys question for Jeff Fox

["Jeff Fox" <fox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

gwenhwyfaer wrote:
> What was the cheapest that single F21 chips were ever available?

$0.00

> But where can I buy a C18 for a couple of cents?

IntellaSys has been and will be giving away chips with
many c18 on them on flash drives with free development
systems.

> It's an unrealistic figure;

You are uniformed. I was understating but can't tell you
by how much.

> In fact (and forgive the wandering off topic here), here's a
> suggestion for an interesting benchmark - the number of voices of
> MIDI-driven OPL2-style FM synthesis (at a 48k sample rate) that each
> chip can perform, complete with a subjective audio quality comparison.
> It's a nice realtime app; the specifications are fixed, well known,
> and quite implementation-independent; it doesn't need multiplication
> or large amounts of memory, but it can take advantage of it if it's
> there; the clock required for sample output has the potential to test
> interrupt latency; you end up with a nice little figure at the end of
> it; it scales down to the lowest PICs (which may manage to get 1 voice
> out, but not much more) and up to the scary fast GPUs nVidia are
> producing these days (millions of voices! eek!); it can be implemented
> easily in assembler, C or Forth; and it would provide anyone
> interested in synthesis with a ready-made demo app.

Wasn't the 96k sample MIDI-driven FM synthesis and waveguide
synthesis and more that has been demonstrated before and where
voices were compared to Pentium and custom chips where people
could do subjective audio quality comparisons sufficient to
figure where chips that didn't beat Pentium would
fit in a comparison?

>> An p21, f21 or c18 was not meant to be
>> a big Intel chip designed for C code, they are designed
>> for realtime low-power efficient code.
>
> Believe me, the Intel chips aren't designed for C code either.

I believed Intel press releases when they started saying they
were optimizing performance for popular C software starting around
the time of 486 and beyond.  And I believed the chip designers at
IntellaSys who had previously worked at Intel designing Pentium
on that subject.

> The
> great gcc v x86 battles of the past and present bear witness to that!

Those only bear witness to the fact that Intel also needed to
be backwards, backwards compatible with x86 legacy along with Cish.
Cish only makes gccers happier.

> Nor is it fair, in timeframe terms, to compare a 386/387 combination
> to an F21, when the 486 had been the current x86 generation since
> 1989. The Pentium (P5) was introduced in 1993, too, so in terms of
> timeframe, an F21 v P5 comparison isn't completely unreasonable.

Compters that were side by side in time were compared. Chuck and
I had 386 with p21 and 486/Pentium in i21 and f21 days but f21
clock was two to four times faster than my Pentium's clock.
I still have that Pentium laptop and it still has F21 software
on it.  I think it still boots up and runs.

> and the ability to talk
> to external RAM seems to have disappeared.

Most of the SEAforth pins are labeled external memory
interface.  Early prototypes had external ram server
software in rom but unless you use the specific rams
supported by those specific drivers those roms were
wasted. With the external ram server in internal ram
one may configure for a wide range of external memory
interfaces.

> Unfortunately, nobody seems to want that kind of programmer any more -
> which leaves me (for one) out of a job, and increasingly alienated
> from the field I trained in. Mneh.

I think nobody goes too far. But as a trend it is
seen as decreasing. But that's the nature of most
anything one trains for, in time those skills will
be seen as old fashion and adaptation is required.

I know parallelism is on the way in not out.  Forth
chips have been around for along time with only modestly
millions of units quanitites.  Perhaps a large boost
in performance/cost or performance/price or the
combination with parallelism will see Forth chips
more on their way in than out.  Everything is a
gamble.

There has been a lot of positive interest into
IntellaSys technology.  There is also a lot of
apprehension in general to the new parallelism trend
as there has always been to anything new.  But
the folks work with it think it is fun.

Best Wishes



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