a golden age of Amiga

[Fats]

Partial reconfiguration is possible, but it's still externally driven (by software running on a CPU).

There is nothing stopping a FPGA partially reconfiguring itself. One of the roadblocks is that the FPGA manufacturers want to keep their bitstream format proprietary so you have to use their software to generate them. But I think this problem can be solved with some clever reverse engineering.

greets,
Staf.

[Fats]

Interesting, thanks for the link. Could you help further by advising on the lowest cost FPGA that offers partial reconfiguration?

Unfortunately I am no expert on PCB board design etc; I learned about partial reconfiguration from a presentation from a Xilinx guy at my work. I'm afraid you'll have to go through the spec sheets of the Xilinx.

greets,
Staf.

[Mrs Beanbag]

Hang on a minute... I've got a Virtex 5 manual sitting on my shelf in here, I should probably have a look at it.

[HenryCase]

Sadly it's the same story, "this is Ohm's law.  It just is."  It's empirical, there isn't really a derivation.

Sorry it wasn't as useful to you as I'd hoped.

Now that's interesting, I guess it's kind of similar in principle (to switch cores in and out) but my idea is to be able to fetch them from off chip, this has a certain number in reserve that it can switch in and out.  I could use that technique as well, I guess.

Yes, the Tilera approach is definitely interesting. It also seems to be reasonably affordable, judging from this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFghLrpPy6M
"Tad over $100 in 2000 lot quantities". Of course, the price will be higher for single units. Sadly the devboard is too pricey for me:
http://dangerousprototypes.com/2011/04/27/what-does-a-7500-dev-kit-look-like/

You know this sounds very much like my own idea for an OS from several years back.

Cool. What ideas did you have for your OS?

[HenryCase]

Unfortunately I am no expert on PCB board design etc; I learned about partial reconfiguration from a presentation from a Xilinx guy at my work. I'm afraid you'll have to go through the spec sheets of the Xilinx.

Okay, thanks.

[HenryCase]

Maybe I am biased; I am already working for more than 15 years in the microelectronics research and development institute imec.

I'm not going to derail this thread further by countering your full post (as I have more to discuss than just memristors), but would like to point out that someone at your company thinks memristor-based RAM is worth researching:
http://www2.imec.be/be_en/research/sub-22nm-cmos.html

Advanced memory: DRAM, floating gate, resistive RAM

I take it you work in a different department?

[Fats]

I'm not going to derail this thread further by countering your full post (as I have more to discuss than just memristors), but would like to point out that someone at your company thinks memristor-based RAM is worth researching:
http://www2.imec.be/be_en/research/sub-22nm-cmos.html


I take it you work in a different department?

I can only quote from my previous post:
"My personal opinion is that ReRAM is a possible good candidate for the next non-volatile memory, but then only if the prediction of the scaling stop for NAND flash is finally becoming reality. I don't think it will replace DRAM."
I want to add that probably certain characteristics of ReRAM will find their niche market even if it won't replace FLASH NVM.

greets,
Staf.

[HenryCase]

I can only quote from my previous post:
"My personal opinion is that ReRAM is a possible good candidate for the next non-volatile memory, but then only if the prediction of the scaling stop for NAND flash is finally becoming reality. I don't think it will replace DRAM."
I want to add that probably certain characteristics of ReRAM will find their niche market even if it won't replace FLASH NVM.

At the end of the day, neither of our opinions is going to change the outcome of how the tech takes off, so let's let the tech stand on its own merits, and bring this conversation back to that which we can have an influence on i.e. the next evolution of personal computing. Do you have any opinions on what has been discussed so far (other than the memristor stuff)?

[Fats]

Do you have any opinions on what has been discussed so far (other than the memristor stuff)?

Yes, I do think the Amiga community is now more enjoyable then some time ago but talking about a golden age of Amiga is a bridge too far IMHO.


greets,
Staf.

[Mrs Beanbag]

We can dream, can't we?  And I like my dreams to be as detailed as possible.

[Thorham]

Yes, I do think the Amiga community is now more enjoyable then some time ago but talking about a golden age of Amiga is a bridge too far IMHO.

Very true, especially if you want to make it happen using things have nothing to do with Amiga in the first place: A golden age of Amiga without Amigas? Yeah, right :lol:

[HenryCase]

@Thorham
What's being discussed is not necessarily a golden age of computers called Amigas, but a new golden age of personal computing, the next evolutionary step from what we had before if you will.

If you weren't attracted to the revolutionary platforms of the past, then you won't be interested in any new revolutions that come along, that much is true, but for people who don't have that ambition they can settle for nostalgia instead.

[Thorham]

@HenryCase:

Fair enough

Yes, I've lost interest in that completely. I don't care about the fastest computers anymore at all (my peecee is a 667 mhz P3), because I've become a software man This is incidentally why I still like Amigas: There's a lot of room for improvement software wise (just look at the OS, for example), and it's challenging.

All this new hardware is very nice, but to me it's pointless to pursue if it's only going to run bloatware ports (yes, I think we should start from scratch, call me crazy if you want .

[Mrs Beanbag]

@Thorham

you know what, me too.  This is something of a paradox for me, because I love to think about solutions to problems such as how to make the fastest computer ever, but I personally have no use whatsoever for the solution...

I used to work in software with a guy who used to tell me there's no point optimising my code because "everyone has 3GHz CPUs and 4Gb of RAM now", grr

[HenryCase]

@Mrs Beanbag
The thing about computing, is that as the power increases and algorithms evolve, the tasks you'd class as too impractical to consider before become much more accessible. It's hard to guess what level of performance improvement is going to be achieved, so it's also hard to predict the tasks that will enter the realms of practicality. Therefore, you often find technology evolves with a 'build first, think of the applications later' approach.

Going back to your exploration of Ohm's Law, found this thread, thought you might find it useful:
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=179056