On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 9:12 AM, David Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 12:17:48AM -0700, Bob La Quey wrote: > > >VLSI Design Tools > > > >In 500 lines of colorForth these tools provide everything > >required to design a chip. They are derived from an earlier > >version called OKAD that successfully generated many versions > >of Forth microprocessor chips. > >http://www.colorforth.com/vlsi.html > > Not much in chip design these days is done at the gate level. I would > describe his tools as a piece of the very last stage of a chip design > suite. Desiging that way is kind of like writing in assembly (actually, > it's kind of like programming in Forth, hmm). Yes, it's possible, but not > very pleasant or productive. > > Charles Moore may be brilliant but he doesn't seem to be able to think > outside of his very tiny little box. He thinks operating systems are > antequated and should go away (as in, we should all just be running forth > systems directly on modern hardware). He just doesn't have a very > realistic view of the world. > > David
Hi David, The Intellasys SeaForth 24 chip was designed with the tools that you are disparaging. How would you have designed such a chip? These tools have been used to design the Intellasys SeaForth 24 processor array chip. http://www.intellasys.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=35&Itemid=63 The trick is understanding. Undestanding how to go from the chip level to much higher levels of architecture in a powerful hierarchy, which Forth makes relatively easy to do if you understand what it is that is to be done. If you don't have that understanding then Forth won't help you. The massive tools you talk about embedd a _lot_ of knowledge so that the average chip designer needs to know far less. This is both good and bad. Many argue thgat it is unrealistic becuase as in all things most chip designers are by definition just average and need all the help they can get. So it goes. BobLQ -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
