3 ms·

I figure someone might as well go whole-hog on that and build a PC with just a big ol' FPGA.

flatiron 5y ago
Fpgas are very unsuitable general purpose computers. De10 nano is a very beefy fpga and can barely play doom acting like a general purpose 486 and lacks a fpga
- autoliteInline 5y ago
  Oh well, I figured that a PowerPC Notebook was for hobbyists. What I would find fascinating is to think about languages and OSs for FPGA and try to break loose from the utterly boring C/Unix/68k,x86,MIPS,blah paradigm. Having something turnkey with attachment to various ports and a display would be kind of cool. Maybe that exists already. I worked on a project with a processor-on-an-FPGA and while it wasn't fast, the video codec in FPGA made it useful. Kind of a neat thing I think.
  - flatiron 5y ago
    Ppc notebook is a thing because ppc has been “open sourced” so you can just make ppc chips using great documentation with nobody knocking on your door. As a technology it’s dead as a door nail but it’s free as speech.
lrvick 5y ago
That is being done too for when trust REALLY matters. See the Precursor.
dragontamer 5y ago
FPGAs are incredibly closed, outside of Lattice Semiconductor's tiny FPGAs (unsuitable for computers). In all practicality for "openness", any open-source advocate should rather use Intel/AMD than Xilinx/Altera. Closed-source synthesizers, closed source bootup, closed source loaders, etc. etc. You're pretty much trusting the FPGA software more than any CPU.
- duskwuff 5y ago
  > In all practicality for "openness", any open-source advocate should rather use Intel/AMD than Xilinx/Altera. That's an ironic comparison to make -- Intel bought Altera in 2015, and AMD is in the process of acquiring Xilinx. Between the two, though, there's been a lot more work done on open toolchains for Xilinx FPGAs.
- autoliteInline 5y ago
  oh, bummer. So you'd need a clean tool chain too.

Fpgas are very unsuitable general purpose computers. De10 nano is a very beefy fpga and can barely play doom acting like a general purpose 486 and lacks a fpga

autoliteInline 5y ago
Oh well, I figured that a PowerPC Notebook was for hobbyists. What I would find fascinating is to think about languages and OSs for FPGA and try to break loose from the utterly boring C/Unix/68k,x86,MIPS,blah paradigm. Having something turnkey with attachment to various ports and a display would be kind of cool. Maybe that exists already. I worked on a project with a processor-on-an-FPGA and while it wasn't fast, the video codec in FPGA made it useful. Kind of a neat thing I think.
- flatiron 5y ago
  Ppc notebook is a thing because ppc has been “open sourced” so you can just make ppc chips using great documentation with nobody knocking on your door. As a technology it’s dead as a door nail but it’s free as speech.

lrvick 5y ago

That is being done too for when trust REALLY matters. See the Precursor.

dragontamer 5y ago

FPGAs are incredibly closed, outside of Lattice Semiconductor's tiny FPGAs (unsuitable for computers). In all practicality for "openness", any open-source advocate should rather use Intel/AMD than Xilinx/Altera. Closed-source synthesizers, closed source bootup, closed source loaders, etc. etc. You're pretty much trusting the FPGA software more than any CPU.

duskwuff 5y ago
> In all practicality for "openness", any open-source advocate should rather use Intel/AMD than Xilinx/Altera. That's an ironic comparison to make -- Intel bought Altera in 2015, and AMD is in the process of acquiring Xilinx. Between the two, though, there's been a lot more work done on open toolchains for Xilinx FPGAs.
autoliteInline 5y ago
oh, bummer. So you'd need a clean tool chain too.