MISC

[jfox@xxxxxxxxxx (Jeff Fox)]

Dear MISC readers:

Eugene states:

>Indeed. I also, happen to be somewhat bitter about this lamentable lack
>of information on chip progress. I mean: FORTH is pretty exotic already,
>must this be further aggravated by lack of user support? With virtually
>no data sheets I can live with. But relying on on a single source, with
>no detailed information nor progress info forthcoming, while in dire need to
>choose a reliable hardware platform to develop a product? Scusi, but I am
>not mad. If this goes on for some more time, I have to choose an
>off-shelf embedded controller. My financers won't wait much longer.

I think most MISC readers realize that the iTV Corporation has been
spearheading MISC development.  Since the F21b run in February 96 iTV
has been submitting chips to Mosis at every opportunity.  As Chuck has
said this is sort of "blind" development in that you submit a new chip
a month before the last one has come back, and two months before you
have characterized the problems that the last chip had.

iTV has provided Chuck with development hardware, software tools,
diagnostic hardware, design support staff, chip test support staff,
etc.  Chuck has been making fast progress than he was when he was
spending time looking for funding.

F21 has been on hold.  There is no sense in solving the same problems
two times when once will do, and I was never able to fund development
in the professional way that iTV is doing it.  When the last glitches
have been fixed and i21 is down to the final tuning we will make a
third run on F21 as F21c.

F21c will be packaged in plcc for production and a ceramic lcc for
prototyping, and I hope to work out a deal with iTV to be involved
in some joint deals for development and perhaps distribution.

I realize that people have wanted more information on the details
of what goes on behind the doors at iTV, but iTV has its own plans
for releasing information.

At one point I put information from a local press release about iTV
and i21 on my web page, and was asked the web site developers and
marketing staff here to let them control the information release.
I was asked to remove the page I posted with the image map showing
how iTV, Offete, Computer Cowboys, and Ultra Technology were related
as well as the link to the information I had posted about i21.

More information has been released publicly.  iTV now has glossies
and is developing detailed specifications for the i21 and the
iTV Pegasys box.

I have not had the freedom at iTV to make all information public
about our chips, our software, etc.

We have in addition to conventional CAD development tools, and OKAD,
various tools for MISC development.  We have our Forest OS, a software
simulator that simulates the cpu, video, serial, and keyboard processors
in the i21.  We have a target compiler and various tools, and are
developing an ever expanding library of functions for the OS.

I feel vindicated by the size of the GUI module in the OS.  As I have
said for years you only need about 1k of code to provide a multitasking
multiwindowed graphic user interface extension to Forth.  We have not
exploited some of the nice video hardware features, but we do use
some of it in the GUI design.

>This will exclude the Forth option, but it will keept the product alive.
>
>> the page with I21 press release on Jeffs Web site that says it will be
>> available for licencing etc, despite the denial of ITV when I enquired,
>
>I think i21 won't, but F21 will (provided, I'll ever live to see it).
>
>Eugene Leitl
>
>> Wayne Morellini
>> waynem1@cq-pan.cqu.edu.au

I have the latest iTV glossies in front of me.  On the back it states that
the i21 chip is not available for general purpose use, nor are the
operating system, applications, programming languages and tools
developed by iTV. However, iTV is interested in qualified partners to
jointly develop other applications for the technology.

iTV is clearly thinking big, so if you own a chip foundry or your
company makes millions of widgets you know who you are.

Ultra Technology will be doing some joint development with iTV and
will offer some development tools when we have chips and systems.

I would of course like to say we will have F21 working 100% on this
date...  But the nature of this develoment is prototype and test and
the develpment cycle is slow.  I still want to submit F21c in Nov
to try to get it back by the end of Jan 97.  I have not been able
to spend a million dollars on F21 development this year, so i21 has
taken the lead, but I don't think it will have a signifigant lead
in production.  I will say that I want to submit a new F21 design
as soon as we can this year.

But there is only so much that can be done.  I would like to be a
little more careful to do more simulated testing this time before
we do the fabrication run.  It is sad to find a crippling bug in
the design while the non-refundable fab run is in progress.

Chuck advised me years ago not to promote F21 prematurely.  Each time
I have written technical documentation it was invalidated by Chuck's
design changes.  For this reason some of the documentation on F21
is now out of date.  But about the time I cross-check all the spec
and make it public Chuck will give me a new design spec with
different register locations etc.  I have felt it was too early to
provide technical information when it cannot be accurate.

One of the big problems with MuP21 was the way documentation went
from Chuck to Dr. Ting and got published.  I don't want a half
dozen different versions of F21 documentation that were each sort
of right at the time they were published.  Aside from register
addresses and token values or other details that may change in the
F21 spec most of the design is pretty well frozen.  F21 is not
going to get any major design changes.

I am sorry if people are bitter about the slow progress of MISC
chips in the last few years, but we do what we can.  At this point
I am very pleased that it is still in progress.  After years of
seeing Chuck, Dr. Ting and myself make sacrifices to keep pushing
forward in the face of constant obstacles, criticism and ridicule
I am tempted to ask people "what have you done to help get MISC
flying?"

At times I have found it very discouraging to see so little
confidence that MISC technology has any potential market share.
I pushed the concept of a very cheap internet terminal based on
MISC to a lot of people for several years before I ran into
Gary and Joe.  They have show that they were able to convince
the right people that there is some potential to be able to
finance serious development of the technology.

I now think that iTV may develop that "killer app" that is needed
to highlight the MISC technology and get some recognition.  It may
in fact give a much needed boost to F21 before things are over.

Jeff Fox

jeff@itvcorp.com       the iTV Corporation
jfox@netcom.com        Ultra Technology Inc.
jfox@dnai.com
http://www.dnai.com/~jfox