Re: Project Proposal : Simulators for the MAYBE and the G-Machine

[Shlomi Fish]

On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, mulix wrote:

> On Sun, 29 Jul 2001, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> 
> > The internals and behaviours of the MAYBE and the G-Machine are described
> > in the book, which is still in print and available in "Sifriyath Hadikan".
> >
> > My question is: do you think it will be a valuable project to write these
> > simulators so they would be able to run on Linux, but would also have a
> > back-end that is portable enough to run on any other 32-bit and 64-bit
> > system? This project has the advantage that those who take it will become
> > familiar with the internals of a full-fledged computer, which would be a
> > good experience in digital electronics.
> 
> i'm not sure how worthy a project it would be, if you consider the
> following points:
> 
> * how much hack value does this project have? or to put it another way,
> how much fun will we have doing it?
> 

If you ask me, touching/deleting/polling a file does not exactly have too
much hack value either. (not to start a flame war here, but it is a pretty
trivial thing to do). This project would give us useful experience in
digital electronics and I have some very good idea for a wise design of
it. I can elaborate on my ideas if you care.

> * will it be usefull to anyone, excepts students taking this class?
> 

I believe many EE, CS, Comp. Eng., etc. students worldwide study from this
book. And I'd recommend reading it to those who did not study for it, and
our simulator (and its source code) can be a useful tool for them too.

> since i haven't read the book (though i probably will, based on your
> recommendation), i have no idea what is the scope of the work required,
> which is another issue to consider.
> 

It's bigger than R2L, but if we split it among us, it should not too much
time. We can have one session in which we decide on which language to us,
which APIs, what the design would be, etc. And then several sessions for
coordinating the development. And remember that it involves two separate
programs, which we can do at different stages with a break for something
else in the middle.

Regards,

        Shlomi Fish

> -- 
> mulix
> http://www.advogato.com/person/mulix
> 
> linux/reboot.h: #define LINUX_REBOOT_MAGIC1 0xfee1dead
> 



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Shlomi Fish        [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
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A more experienced programmer does not make less bugs. He just realizes
what went wrong more quickly.