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Enzian – An open research computer built by the Systems Group at ETH Zurich

peter_d_sherman 4y ago
>As a research computer, Enzian is designed for computer systems software research and deliberately over-engineered. Enzian has a big server-class CPU closely coupled to a large FPGA, with ample main memory and network bandwidth on both sides." Why potentially use Enzian hardware? Well, watch a few minutes of the following talk at the following time offset by Professor Timothy Roscoe of the Systems Group of the Dept. of Computer Science at ETH Zurich -- and see if the argument he makes is not a persuasive one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36myc8wQhLo&t=828s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36myc8wQhLo&t=828s Related: https://people.inf.ethz.ch/troscoe/ https://people.inf.ethz.ch/troscoe/ Related: https://enzian.systems/faq/ https://enzian.systems/faq/ >"Q. Is Enzian open-source? A. We’re releasing all of the software we write for Enzian as open source. It is our goal to also open-source as much of the FPGA doughnut as we can, including our implementation of ECI, which is needed to understand how to talk to the CPU in more interesting ways than just shared memory. We will own the board design, so it may be possible and/or a good idea to release that as well, but (as we have discovered) the hardware industry has very different ideas about what can and cannot be released." Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33145411 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33145411
anigbrowl 4y ago
This is weird and intriguing. Is it possible this will yield an truly open workstation/cluster architecture?
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
  Only if you have a truly open purse. This is not using Spartan-6.
raydiatian 4y ago
ETH Zurich is awesome. They did those quadcopter acrobatics videos back in 2015, where one QC tosses a baton to another. The papers they published helped me learn control theory.
__d 4y ago
ETH Zurich has a long history of building its own hardware. The Lilith system was built using AMD2900-series bit slice components. It was inspired by Nicklaus Wirth's sabbatical at Xerox PARC, where he was exposed to the Xerox Alto. IIRC, several hundred were built and used, including for the development of Modula-2. It was later followed by the Ceres systems, initially an NS32000-based system, used for example as the host for Oberon development. As Alan Kay says: “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
hanniabu 4y ago
I thought this was about Ethereum's ETH Zurich, but completely unrelated

>As a research computer, Enzian is designed for computer systems software research and deliberately over-engineered. Enzian has a big server-class CPU closely coupled to a large FPGA, with ample main memory and network bandwidth on both sides." Why potentially use Enzian hardware? Well, watch a few minutes of the following talk at the following time offset by Professor Timothy Roscoe of the Systems Group of the Dept. of Computer Science at ETH Zurich -- and see if the argument he makes is not a persuasive one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36myc8wQhLo&t=828s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36myc8wQhLo&t=828s Related: https://people.inf.ethz.ch/troscoe/ https://people.inf.ethz.ch/troscoe/ Related: https://enzian.systems/faq/ https://enzian.systems/faq/ >"Q. Is Enzian open-source? A. We’re releasing all of the software we write for Enzian as open source. It is our goal to also open-source as much of the FPGA doughnut as we can, including our implementation of ECI, which is needed to understand how to talk to the CPU in more interesting ways than just shared memory. We will own the board design, so it may be possible and/or a good idea to release that as well, but (as we have discovered) the hardware industry has very different ideas about what can and cannot be released." Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33145411 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33145411

anigbrowl 4y ago

This is weird and intriguing. Is it possible this will yield an truly open workstation/cluster architecture?

LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
Only if you have a truly open purse. This is not using Spartan-6.

raydiatian 4y ago

ETH Zurich is awesome. They did those quadcopter acrobatics videos back in 2015, where one QC tosses a baton to another. The papers they published helped me learn control theory.

__d 4y ago

ETH Zurich has a long history of building its own hardware. The Lilith system was built using AMD2900-series bit slice components. It was inspired by Nicklaus Wirth's sabbatical at Xerox PARC, where he was exposed to the Xerox Alto. IIRC, several hundred were built and used, including for the development of Modula-2. It was later followed by the Ceres systems, initially an NS32000-based system, used for example as the host for Oberon development. As Alan Kay says: “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

hanniabu 4y ago

I thought this was about Ethereum's ETH Zurich, but completely unrelated