5 ms·

They're making their second-generation chip right now, and I think there are a bunch of problems that this chip is an obvious solution for. Chuck Moore is bad

by kick 6y ago

They're making their second-generation chip right now, and I think there are a bunch of problems that this chip is an obvious solution for. Chuck Moore is bad at presentations to outside audiences. This should surprise no one familiar with the man. This doesn't make the tech less useful, though.

7thaccount 6y ago
Which problems for those of us who don't find it obvious? I'm a big fan of Chuck and Forth in general, but I don't do any embedded work since college, so I don't have much personal use for this kind of system that I can think of.
- kick 6y ago
  See my reply to a different comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23157949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23157949 AI is just the most obvious usage, though. It'd be unimaginative to just consider embedded uses: there are terribly practical uses for it. Consider that most big companies buy hardware based on performance per watt, then consider that GA144 blows most things out of the water on that front. GA also has a few recommendations (ripped from their site): APPLICATIONS  Energy harvesting applications  Portable devices  Remote sensing and data reduction  Ideal for parallel and/or pipelined work  Image processing  Complex control systems  Cryptography  High speed signal processing  Simulation and synthesis  Inexpensive, massively parallel systems for research and education  Artificial intelligence, neural nets
adwn 6y ago
> [...] I think there are a bunch of problems that this chip is an obvious solution for If those were really obvious, tachyonbeam wouldn't have to ask ;-) In your opinion, what are problems for which this chip would be a solution?
- kick 6y ago
  'tachyonbeam didn't ask. The most obvious one is AI. These things are incredibly parallel & entirely self-contained, and a consumer desktop PSU could power countless amounts of them without a second thought. At $2,000 for 100 chips ($20/chip), you can start to do some really interesting stuff for the cost of a consumer laptop. It's natural that AI is a problem this chip excels at, given Moore studied under McCarthy and all. If you feel morally okay with playing with proprietary software, I really recommend playing a little bit with the simulator of the chip. Given what's intuitive with one or two, you'll probably be able to see the possibilities much better after an hour or so of play.
  - adwn 6y ago
    > The most obvious one is AI. I seriously doubt that. The cores on that chip are extremely memory-limited: 72 bytes per core, that's about 10 kiB per Chip! And if you want to access SDRAM, you need an external SDRAM controller and bit-bang it. Gee, I wonder what that does to throughput and latency... This chip's competition isn't GPUs and AI engines, but very low-cost, low-performance FPGAs, and it would probably lose. Given the extremely constrained environment of the individual cores (no cache, extremely little memory, a stack-based architecture), FPGAs are probably even easier to program. There are no commercial applications, it's a toy.
RodgerTheGreat 6y ago
Has there been any concrete information released about their second-generation chip? The GreenArrays website only contains a few vague hints, suggesting, for example, that it might have a 32-bit datapath.
- kick 6y ago
  Not really; Moore mentioned it in an interview a couple of years ago and it might have came up during a fireside chat?
kragen 6y ago
Are they? You mean a generation following the GA144? That sounds really interesting! I see tantalizing tidbits on http://www.greenarraychips.com/ http://www.greenarraychips.com/: "Latest developments: As of early 2020, shipments of the EVB002 evaluation kit and of G144A12 chips continue. Work continues on improvement of the arrayForth 3 integrated development system. Design of a new chip, G144A2x, continues; this will be upward compatible with the G144A12, with numerous significant improvements." That'll be really wonderful to see!
- kick 6y ago
  Chuck Moore talked about it in a EuroForth interview a year or two ago; a company with a use in mind funded them, and he seemed really enthusiastic. They've updated the website a few different times since; that update is really recent. If you check archive.org you'll probably find interesting little hints. I agree, it's really cool!

by kick 6y ago

7thaccount 6y ago

Which problems for those of us who don't find it obvious? I'm a big fan of Chuck and Forth in general, but I don't do any embedded work since college, so I don't have much personal use for this kind of system that I can think of.

kick 6y ago
See my reply to a different comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23157949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23157949 AI is just the most obvious usage, though. It'd be unimaginative to just consider embedded uses: there are terribly practical uses for it. Consider that most big companies buy hardware based on performance per watt, then consider that GA144 blows most things out of the water on that front. GA also has a few recommendations (ripped from their site): APPLICATIONS  Energy harvesting applications  Portable devices  Remote sensing and data reduction  Ideal for parallel and/or pipelined work  Image processing  Complex control systems  Cryptography  High speed signal processing  Simulation and synthesis  Inexpensive, massively parallel systems for research and education  Artificial intelligence, neural nets

adwn 6y ago

> [...] I think there are a bunch of problems that this chip is an obvious solution for If those were really obvious, tachyonbeam wouldn't have to ask ;-) In your opinion, what are problems for which this chip would be a solution?

kick 6y ago
'tachyonbeam didn't ask. The most obvious one is AI. These things are incredibly parallel & entirely self-contained, and a consumer desktop PSU could power countless amounts of them without a second thought. At $2,000 for 100 chips ($20/chip), you can start to do some really interesting stuff for the cost of a consumer laptop. It's natural that AI is a problem this chip excels at, given Moore studied under McCarthy and all. If you feel morally okay with playing with proprietary software, I really recommend playing a little bit with the simulator of the chip. Given what's intuitive with one or two, you'll probably be able to see the possibilities much better after an hour or so of play.
- adwn 6y ago
  > The most obvious one is AI. I seriously doubt that. The cores on that chip are extremely memory-limited: 72 bytes per core, that's about 10 kiB per Chip! And if you want to access SDRAM, you need an external SDRAM controller and bit-bang it. Gee, I wonder what that does to throughput and latency... This chip's competition isn't GPUs and AI engines, but very low-cost, low-performance FPGAs, and it would probably lose. Given the extremely constrained environment of the individual cores (no cache, extremely little memory, a stack-based architecture), FPGAs are probably even easier to program. There are no commercial applications, it's a toy.

RodgerTheGreat 6y ago

Has there been any concrete information released about their second-generation chip? The GreenArrays website only contains a few vague hints, suggesting, for example, that it might have a 32-bit datapath.

kick 6y ago
Not really; Moore mentioned it in an interview a couple of years ago and it might have came up during a fireside chat?

kragen 6y ago

Are they? You mean a generation following the GA144? That sounds really interesting! I see tantalizing tidbits on http://www.greenarraychips.com/ http://www.greenarraychips.com/: "Latest developments: As of early 2020, shipments of the EVB002 evaluation kit and of G144A12 chips continue. Work continues on improvement of the arrayForth 3 integrated development system. Design of a new chip, G144A2x, continues; this will be upward compatible with the G144A12, with numerous significant improvements." That'll be really wonderful to see!

kick 6y ago
Chuck Moore talked about it in a EuroForth interview a year or two ago; a company with a use in mind funded them, and he seemed really enthusiastic. They've updated the website a few different times since; that update is really recent. If you check archive.org you'll probably find interesting little hints. I agree, it's really cool!