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Is it possible to get a Developer Kit for it? It would be great if there would be some raspberry pi like distribution with a Chip included. I think this could

by 6d65 10y ago

Is it possible to get a Developer Kit for it? It would be great if there would be some raspberry pi like distribution with a Chip included. I think this could speed up the adoption.

trsohmers 10y ago
We'll send an announcement on the mailing list when tools (software based and FPGA based simulation, along with actual silicon) will be available. We will only be getting 200 chips back from this initial test run, so we have to be fairly stringent in who will be getting hardware eval units in the coming months, but if you have a compelling application idea, feel free to send me an email (in my HN profile) and let me know.
- joshu 10y ago
  I am looking forward to hearing how this goes.
  - trsohmers 10y ago
    I'd be happy to give you an update. Shoot me an email if you want to catch up. Also: Looking forward to see more in the self driving car racing ;)
- 6d65 10y ago
  This sounds good. One of the big problems with Mill CPUs is there is that they don't have working silicon yet. I would say getting as much people as possible to play with it, is crucial for a new architecture to get traction. Even better than that would be a open architecture like RISC-V. Though, open architecture has its own drawbacks. Also, as a side note, what do you think about the possibility of using Genetic Algorithms and Machine Learning to generate more efficient types of interconnect architectures.
rbanffy 10y ago
From what I understood, a lot of the software stack would require rewriting. As it is, it doesn't look like it would be friendly to a Linux environment running natively on it, but could be more amenable to a coprocessor-like environment where the host would load programs and the Neo would run them. Did I get it right?
- trsohmers 10y ago
  In the near term, yes, though that is primarily a business reason for us. Supporting Linux is technically possible (old projects such as uCLinux were built around running on MMU-less systems like ours; Mainline Linux 4.2 started to have limited support for a couple of MMU-less systems), though our target areas (HPC and DSP-like tasks) don't necessarily need anything more than a microkernel/RTOS. A full OS like Linux kind of gets in the way if you get the basic stuff like memory allocation, garbage collection, and job scheduling handled separately (by our software tools). Since we are a small startup and focusing on a small area, we want to take off a part of the problem we can easily chew, rather than trying to immediately jump at Linux, so we chose our target applications/market accordingly.
  - rbanffy 10y ago
    I am perfectly fine with the idea to have a supercomputer running a specialized OS and a front-end machine running the sysadmin-friendly OS. It feels like a Connection Machine with fewer blinking lights.

by 6d65 10y ago

Is it possible to get a Developer Kit for it? It would be great if there would be some raspberry pi like distribution with a Chip included. I think this could speed up the adoption.

trsohmers 10y ago

We'll send an announcement on the mailing list when tools (software based and FPGA based simulation, along with actual silicon) will be available. We will only be getting 200 chips back from this initial test run, so we have to be fairly stringent in who will be getting hardware eval units in the coming months, but if you have a compelling application idea, feel free to send me an email (in my HN profile) and let me know.

joshu 10y ago
I am looking forward to hearing how this goes.
- trsohmers 10y ago
  I'd be happy to give you an update. Shoot me an email if you want to catch up. Also: Looking forward to see more in the self driving car racing ;)
6d65 10y ago
This sounds good. One of the big problems with Mill CPUs is there is that they don't have working silicon yet. I would say getting as much people as possible to play with it, is crucial for a new architecture to get traction. Even better than that would be a open architecture like RISC-V. Though, open architecture has its own drawbacks. Also, as a side note, what do you think about the possibility of using Genetic Algorithms and Machine Learning to generate more efficient types of interconnect architectures.

rbanffy 10y ago

From what I understood, a lot of the software stack would require rewriting. As it is, it doesn't look like it would be friendly to a Linux environment running natively on it, but could be more amenable to a coprocessor-like environment where the host would load programs and the Neo would run them. Did I get it right?

trsohmers 10y ago
In the near term, yes, though that is primarily a business reason for us. Supporting Linux is technically possible (old projects such as uCLinux were built around running on MMU-less systems like ours; Mainline Linux 4.2 started to have limited support for a couple of MMU-less systems), though our target areas (HPC and DSP-like tasks) don't necessarily need anything more than a microkernel/RTOS. A full OS like Linux kind of gets in the way if you get the basic stuff like memory allocation, garbage collection, and job scheduling handled separately (by our software tools). Since we are a small startup and focusing on a small area, we want to take off a part of the problem we can easily chew, rather than trying to immediately jump at Linux, so we chose our target applications/market accordingly.
- rbanffy 10y ago
  I am perfectly fine with the idea to have a supercomputer running a specialized OS and a front-end machine running the sysadmin-friendly OS. It feels like a Connection Machine with fewer blinking lights.