[Bloat] hardware diversions

[Dave Taht <dave@taht.net>]

Jonathan Morton <chromatix99@gmail.com> writes:

> Just to add - I think the biggest impediment to experimentation in
> asynchronous logic is the complete absence of convenient Muller
> C-element gates in the 74-series logic family.  If you want to build
> some, I recommend using NAND and OR gates as inputs to active-low SR
> flipflops.

Need millions of transistors, not dozens. :)

To me the biggest barrier is in tools. I'm still looking for the caltech
tool and language which really helped in thinking in this way, and I did
find it on github once, and it still seemed developed....

And the field is not entirely dead, after all. I keep meaning to pick up
one of the new risc-v boards. Here's a async design of the risc-v... in
GO of all things. (I also really hate the universal adoption of java
amongst the circuit design folk... and I really loved the prospects of
chisel, except for the jvm dependency):

https://www.inf.pucrs.br/~calazans/publications/2017_MarcosSartori_EoTW.pdf

in the risc-v world, well, it's still trundling forward.

https://www.lowrisc.org/about/

This is pretty neat - standby is 2uA:

https://greenwaves-technologies.com/en/gap8-product/

And pulp is pretty neat.

https://pulp-platform.org//

Still, I liked xmos's stuff... rexcomputing hasn't surfaced in a while

In the last weird hardware embedded news of the day, you can get a old
intel compute stick for 34 dollars on ebay.

https://www.ebay.com/p/Intel-Compute-Stick-STCK1A8LFC-Intel-Atom-Z3735F-1-33GHz-8GB-PC-Stick-BOXSTCK1A8LFC/11020833331?iid=153273128090&chn=ps

they were painfully slow but fit on your keychain. The most modern
version of this design is
https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Compute-Computer-processor-BOXSTK2m3W64CC/dp/B01AZC4IKK/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1543389564&sr=1-4&keywords=intel+compute+stick

2 cores, 4MB of cache, 64GB of flash... on your keychain.

I rather miss vga in that it would be better to be able to screw these in...