5 ms·

A FPGA, huh? Interesting, why not just target ARM? I doubt that's going anywhere soon.

sinrostro 11y ago
I imagine Prof. Wirth must have thought that 32032 wasn't going anywhere soon 20 years ago. As I see it, the ARM instruction sets (note the use of plural) are a moving target (look at Cortex chips with Thumb2 only). They are far from RISC if you count them, and the instruction encoding is horrendulous. It's like saying "why not target Windows? I doubt that's going anywhere soon" With FPGAs, your only risk is that the manufacturer discontinues the chip you targeted, and you can then target another brand with the same (or nearly the same) HDL code.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  100% spot on assessment! Wirth thought ahead well enough last time in making it modular and simple enough to easily port. They thought even better by putting it on a FPGA. And also with CPU and components simple enough to implement on ASIC with old node (350nm or 180nm). That's inexpensive enough to be crowd-funded. Need the I/O stuff, etc to be implemented for the node, too, though...
  - sinrostro 11y ago
    Thanks. And I didn't even mention security in ARM chips (or lack thereof)
- kragen 11y ago
  20 years ago was 1995. NS32k was long dead then; National retired it in 1990 when it was only six years old. Even when it came out, it was kind of an underdog compared the the already-five-year-old 68k, which was already powering the SUN workstations and went on to power any number of Sun competitors plus the Lisa, the Macintosh, and the PalmPilot. ARM has been around at this point for 30 years, and yes, there are incompatibilities from one to the next. But it'll probably be around in some form for another 30 years. And, yes, your Windows binaries will probably still be runnable ten years from now, and your Linux binaries probably won't be.
  - cmrdporcupine 11y ago
    I imagine Wirth chose 32032 for its purported elegance, not its longevity or commercial practicality. As I recall they had all sorts of initial problems and then lost the war for that market segment against the 68k. I have heard many people talk about the NS32k in positive overall terms, I've researched it a few times, it looks like a nice CISC architecture, but not different/better enough than the 68k at the time. I do recall the team under Jack Tramiel at Atari looked into the NS32k for their new 16/32-bit system, and even built a prototype, and then tossed it in favour of 68k because of purported bugs in the NS32k.
    - dws 11y ago
      The 32032 instruction set was wonderful to generate code for. There were a few early bugs (if a floating point instruction crossed a page boundary, and a page fault was triggered, hilarity would ensue), but those were ironed out well before the chip was abandoned.
nickpsecurity 11y ago
I'll add that ARM is a sue-happy organization whose processor licenses cost $1-15 million. MIPS gets so much traction in embedded space by charging a mere $700-900 thousand dollars. If we consider cost to implement, then the tiniest and legally-clear ISA possible makes the most sense. However, my usual recommendation is SPARC given its ecosystem, openness, and mere $99 registration free. RISC-V, esp Rocket processor, will hopefully take its place. A custom, tiny RISC chip on a FPGA? Ok, ok, Wirth... that is more practical... (sighs) Lol...
- joshu 11y ago
  he means, why use a FPGA instead of an ARM cpu. Not ARM on the FPGA.
  - cmrdporcupine 11y ago
    It would mean compromising the theme there of consistency-all-the-way-down. What I would like to see instead would be RISC-V instead of their own ISA. At least there some learnings could be shared with other academics and tinkerers.
    - sklogic 11y ago
      ISA compatibility is overrated.
      - nickpsecurity 11y ago
        Tell that to the companies trying to push MIPS SOC's for Android smartphones. If it isn't ARM, they tell them to get lost. Likewise, for x86 + Windows. As ARM and Intel themselves say, being able to leverage the ecosystem of existing code, tools, talent, and so on is a huge differentiator. ARM on mobile (esp iOS & Android) has a massive ecosystem and many tool vendors whereas RISC-V or Wirth's CPU's don't have jack. So, manufacturers explicitly require ARM for high-end smartphones and SOC makers default on it despite ridiculous licensing cost. Note: Areas like embedded in general with smaller, custom jobs don't worry about ISA's as much. Plenty of ARM, MIPS, PPC, x86, SPARC, Super-H, 16bits, 8bits... you name it. Much more fun space to be a programmer if you get to pick the cpu/board. :)
pjtr 11y ago
There also exist Oberon systems targeting ARM I think. I assume the motivation for FPGA is the original Oberon idea: "its primary goal was to design and implement an entire system from scratch, and to structure it in such a way that it can be described, explained, and understood as a whole." (The original 1985 Oberon system was also running on custom FPGA hardware.) Real "Full-stack" development. :)

I imagine Prof. Wirth must have thought that 32032 wasn't going anywhere soon 20 years ago. As I see it, the ARM instruction sets (note the use of plural) are a moving target (look at Cortex chips with Thumb2 only). They are far from RISC if you count them, and the instruction encoding is horrendulous. It's like saying "why not target Windows? I doubt that's going anywhere soon" With FPGAs, your only risk is that the manufacturer discontinues the chip you targeted, and you can then target another brand with the same (or nearly the same) HDL code.

nickpsecurity 11y ago
100% spot on assessment! Wirth thought ahead well enough last time in making it modular and simple enough to easily port. They thought even better by putting it on a FPGA. And also with CPU and components simple enough to implement on ASIC with old node (350nm or 180nm). That's inexpensive enough to be crowd-funded. Need the I/O stuff, etc to be implemented for the node, too, though...
- sinrostro 11y ago
  Thanks. And I didn't even mention security in ARM chips (or lack thereof)
kragen 11y ago
20 years ago was 1995. NS32k was long dead then; National retired it in 1990 when it was only six years old. Even when it came out, it was kind of an underdog compared the the already-five-year-old 68k, which was already powering the SUN workstations and went on to power any number of Sun competitors plus the Lisa, the Macintosh, and the PalmPilot. ARM has been around at this point for 30 years, and yes, there are incompatibilities from one to the next. But it'll probably be around in some form for another 30 years. And, yes, your Windows binaries will probably still be runnable ten years from now, and your Linux binaries probably won't be.
- cmrdporcupine 11y ago
  I imagine Wirth chose 32032 for its purported elegance, not its longevity or commercial practicality. As I recall they had all sorts of initial problems and then lost the war for that market segment against the 68k. I have heard many people talk about the NS32k in positive overall terms, I've researched it a few times, it looks like a nice CISC architecture, but not different/better enough than the 68k at the time. I do recall the team under Jack Tramiel at Atari looked into the NS32k for their new 16/32-bit system, and even built a prototype, and then tossed it in favour of 68k because of purported bugs in the NS32k.
  - dws 11y ago
    The 32032 instruction set was wonderful to generate code for. There were a few early bugs (if a floating point instruction crossed a page boundary, and a page fault was triggered, hilarity would ensue), but those were ironed out well before the chip was abandoned.

nickpsecurity 11y ago

I'll add that ARM is a sue-happy organization whose processor licenses cost $1-15 million. MIPS gets so much traction in embedded space by charging a mere $700-900 thousand dollars. If we consider cost to implement, then the tiniest and legally-clear ISA possible makes the most sense. However, my usual recommendation is SPARC given its ecosystem, openness, and mere $99 registration free. RISC-V, esp Rocket processor, will hopefully take its place. A custom, tiny RISC chip on a FPGA? Ok, ok, Wirth... that is more practical... (sighs) Lol...

joshu 11y ago
he means, why use a FPGA instead of an ARM cpu. Not ARM on the FPGA.
- cmrdporcupine 11y ago
  It would mean compromising the theme there of consistency-all-the-way-down. What I would like to see instead would be RISC-V instead of their own ISA. At least there some learnings could be shared with other academics and tinkerers.
  - sklogic 11y ago
    ISA compatibility is overrated.
    - nickpsecurity 11y ago
      Tell that to the companies trying to push MIPS SOC's for Android smartphones. If it isn't ARM, they tell them to get lost. Likewise, for x86 + Windows. As ARM and Intel themselves say, being able to leverage the ecosystem of existing code, tools, talent, and so on is a huge differentiator. ARM on mobile (esp iOS & Android) has a massive ecosystem and many tool vendors whereas RISC-V or Wirth's CPU's don't have jack. So, manufacturers explicitly require ARM for high-end smartphones and SOC makers default on it despite ridiculous licensing cost. Note: Areas like embedded in general with smaller, custom jobs don't worry about ISA's as much. Plenty of ARM, MIPS, PPC, x86, SPARC, Super-H, 16bits, 8bits... you name it. Much more fun space to be a programmer if you get to pick the cpu/board. :)

pjtr 11y ago

There also exist Oberon systems targeting ARM I think. I assume the motivation for FPGA is the original Oberon idea: "its primary goal was to design and implement an entire system from scratch, and to structure it in such a way that it can be described, explained, and understood as a whole." (The original 1985 Oberon system was also running on custom FPGA hardware.) Real "Full-stack" development. :)