lean + mean
vic plichota writes:
> what was under the hood -- amazing to see the high quality, and doing
> so much with so little... rather like the Timex/Sinclair ZX-81
> (which used FORTH to implement BASIC).
Interesting. I didn't knew that.
> Where, oh where is the "maximize your bang-per-buck" methodology gone
> to, these days? Is the MISC list the last refuge?
Forth is the one exception where rapid prototyping is commensurable
with efficiency (though I think the claims of being read-only are
largely true). It is a closely guarded secret since being a
competitive advantage/virtually unknown outside its niche.
As to how efficient the MISC approach is to hardware design: show me
the first stable silicon and I'll believe. The VHDL way of doing it
may be extremely conservative, but it is economical since reliably
producing working system with a minimum investment of designer
time. The Computer Cowboy way of doing it is filling tetranitromethane
into a wildly tweaked engine. Most of the time it just blows all over
the place. Sometimes, occasionally, it may perform great.
Of course at the very end of photolitho one has to resort to design
techniques Chuck now uses (or use GA optimization directly for
substrate patterning), but right now it doesn't give us a purchasable
system.
