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is we is... or is we aint? — Parallax Forums

is we is... or is we aint?

kbashkbash Posts: 117
edited 2014-07-16 16:33 in Propeller 2
The silence here is more frightening than all the "loud" arguments that went back and forth when we were waiting for the megawatt P2 ...

so I guess this question isn't completely out of the question is ... is something resembling a P2 really gonna happen?


When... where... what? some of us out here have waited for years and years... ( at great sacrifice to our lives and business ) can anyone giving us a REAL idea about what is actually happening with a new processor right now?

Ken.... Chip... anyone in authority.... please, we've believed in you for a very long time. Please... what's happening?
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Comments

  • ozpropdevozpropdev Posts: 2,793
    edited 2014-07-10 21:05
    Last word from Chip was that he was finishing the assembler and was starting on the new ROM code.
    See here
  • Oldbitcollector (Jeff)Oldbitcollector (Jeff) Posts: 8,091
    edited 2014-07-10 21:33
    It'll happen when it happens... There are plenty of other toys to work with until it does.

    It's probably for the best that this section is quiet as it lets Chip finish this project without distraction.

    Be patient. Getting anxious won't change anything or make it go faster.. trust me. I'm one of the people you mentioned..
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,069
    edited 2014-07-10 22:09
    Oldbitcollector (Jeff) wrote: »
    It'll happen when it happens... There are plenty of other toys to work with until it does.

    It's probably for the best that this section is quiet as it lets Chip finish this project without distraction.

    Be patient. Getting anxious won't change anything or make it go faster.. trust me. I'm one of the people you mentioned..
    +1
  • 4x5n4x5n Posts: 745
    edited 2014-07-11 04:51
    Oldbitcollector (Jeff) wrote: »
    It'll happen when it happens... There are plenty of other toys to work with until it does.

    It's probably for the best that this section is quiet as it lets Chip finish this project without distraction.

    Be patient. Getting anxious won't change anything or make it go faster.. trust me. I'm one of the people you mentioned..

    +2

    Remember that it's a small group of people developing the P2. I get the impression that Chip knows what he wants and is working very hard at getting the new chip designed and ready for testing.
  • Peter JakackiPeter Jakacki Posts: 10,193
    edited 2014-07-11 06:13
    To me the quietness is very reassuring in that real work is underway and I just imagine that Chip's face is aglow over the coalescence of a good n honest P2. Why it warms the cockles of me heart it does.
  • rjo__rjo__ Posts: 2,114
    edited 2014-07-11 06:46
    I think we should remember that "is" isn't was it used to be. Once upon a time, we could ponder "...what 'is' is..."

    Now we should remember that is is not http://www.professionaladviser.com/ifaonline/news/1314165/fis-private-equity-renamed-isis-capital, and even the simple form "is" has a new meaning that has our responsible adults scurrying to catalog all web occurrences.

    So, the question should have been "r we or rnt we?" To which I would reply: You can't spell Parallax without an "r."
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2014-07-11 08:11
    Are we there yet?

    You can't spell "Parallax" without "lax".

    Oh, never mind.
  • DaveJensonDaveJenson Posts: 375
    edited 2014-07-11 08:32
    Heater. wrote: »
    Are we there yet?

    You can't spell "Parallax" without "lax".

    Oh, never mind.

    And you can't spell Parallax without a para....
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2014-07-11 10:00
    And you can't spell Heater without '....er'.

    Just let Chip be... and we will all have a nice Christmas. I am looking forward to Tackyon Forth of the Propeller2.
  • Dave HeinDave Hein Posts: 6,347
    edited 2014-07-11 10:22
    And you can't spell Tachyon without an "h", unless you're Loopy. :)
  • localrogerlocalroger Posts: 3,452
    edited 2014-07-11 10:23
    It'll be coming 'round the mountain when it comes!
    It'll have sixteen cogs a blazin' when it comes!
    It'll be quite the sight to see as it bit bangs USB
    It'll be coming 'round the mountain when it comes!
  • User NameUser Name Posts: 1,451
    edited 2014-07-11 13:30
    Props to kbash for his O Chip Where Art Thou? theme.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2014-07-11 14:20
    And you can't spell "Loopy" without "poo".

    Sorry, only joking.

    What was the point here again? Oh, yeah...Are we there yet?
  • mindrobotsmindrobots Posts: 6,506
    edited 2014-07-11 14:33
    ...and of course, "Are we there yet?" is just an anagram for "Rehear Tweet Ye"

    so, there ya go!
  • mklrobomklrobo Posts: 420
    edited 2014-07-11 19:13
    :) Whatever is it, I am sure it will be great.I hope it is competitive with what in on the market today,
    en reference to rasperry pi, beaglebone, & Galileo. :)
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2014-07-12 00:53
    mklrobo,
    I hope it is competitive with what in on the market today, en reference to rasperry pi, beaglebone, & Galileo.
    We are all looking forward to a great and hopefully competitive Prop II.

    However I don't think the Propellers are to be compared to Raspberry Pi, Beagle Bone, etc. They are completely different machines. Those are boards not chips. They are designed to be full up computers running Linux or other OS, not micro-controllers.

    It's like comparing KIA cars to a London buses.

    More valid comparisons are to be made with the small ARM Cortex micro-controllers, the STM32F4 and such like. Those are micro-controllers. of a similar size and price, with on chip RAM and FLASH. They don't have many processor cores but that is to a large extent offset by having a ton of hardware peripherals on chip, UART, SPI, PWM, I2C, USB, RTC, etc etc. Not to mention floating point hardware.

    The Prop II has some very stiff competition in the 32 bit micro-controller space today. As a single example look at this: http://fi.mouser.com/ProductDetail/STMicroelectronics/STM32F4DISCOVERY/?qs=J2qbEwLrpCGdWLY96ibNeQ== That's a whole dev board for a 32 bit floating point MCU for only 12 euro. There are many other similar examples. The processors can be had for prices down to less than a dollar. It's crazy stuff.

    The Propellers though will be a hell of a lot easier to program multi-tasking software for.
  • Martin HodgeMartin Hodge Posts: 1,246
    edited 2014-07-12 02:45
    Add to that XMOS's new line of analog capable chips with up to 16 cores. Sounds almost like the P2
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2014-07-12 03:06
    Don't be fooled. The XMOS chips do not have 16 cores. I think you will find that the models you are referring of have 2 cores each with 8 hardware scheduled threads. Due to the way they use pipelining in those processors when using 4 threads on a core you get the maximum possible speed. If you use all 8 threads the execution speed of each drops by a half.

    A couple of years back they started renaming "cores" to "tiles" and "threads" to "logical cores" in all their marketing material. This is a huge pile of marketing dooie by XMOS which really annoys myself and many others. Note that little word "logical" in there. It's an underhanded deception.

    But yes, I agree, the XMOS devices are directly comparable to the Propeller II and will be stiff competition.

    So by way of a couple quick comparison points:

    XMOS cores only have 64K of RAM each. RAM in one core cannot be accessed by another.
    XMOS pins are dedicated to cores. Pins on one core cannot be used by another. There is also complication about how the way XMOS pins are grouped into "ports"
  • dMajodMajo Posts: 855
    edited 2014-07-12 03:45
    Heater. wrote: »
    XMOS cores only have 64K of RAM each. RAM in one core cannot be accessed by another.

    Heater,
    I'll omit "only", specially because the implied device against which you are comparing the XMOS have "only" 2K of RAM per core and that memory is also non accessible by others cores.
    Is the 512K of shared ram that can be accessed by any core and until you don't have an official (hw) hubexec capable to "(semi)transparently" execute code from it at roughly the same core speed this, IMHO, is to be considered only data space, even if with some tricks (read LMM) you find a way to execute it at a cost of big speed penalties.

    I completely agree with other points.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2014-07-12 04:20
    dMajo,

    Yes, these things are not so simple to compare.

    For example in one view the Propeller 2 will have 512K of shared RAM, accessible by all cores, and each core has 512 internal registers.

    With that view in mind we have the comparison:

    1) Prop II has 512K of RAM for code and data. Accessible by all cores.

    2) XMOS has, in the 4 core ("Tile") models, only 256K. Which is divided up between cores. The low end single tile devices only have 64K total.

    3) If we take the Propellers cog space into account we have a 32K more space. What a bonus!

    The P2 is a winner in the code/data space comparison. Hence my "only".

    You do have a point, if outright speed if an issue and your programs are bigger than COG sized, the the Spin byte codes or C's LMM may not cut it.
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2014-07-12 06:37
    dMajo wrote: »
    Heater,
    I'll omit "only", specially because the implied device against which you are comparing the XMOS have "only" 2K of RAM per core and that memory is also non accessible by others cores.
    Is the 512K of shared ram that can be accessed by any core and until you don't have an official (hw) hubexec capable to "(semi)transparently" execute code from it at roughly the same core speed this, IMHO, is to be considered only data space, even if with some tricks (read LMM) you find a way to execute it at a cost of big speed penalties.

    I completely agree with other points.
    Has hub exec been dropped? I thought Chip said it would be in the new P2.
  • ozpropdevozpropdev Posts: 2,793
    edited 2014-07-12 06:52
    Chip indicated that hubexec was still on the table. :)
    See here
  • Bill HenningBill Henning Posts: 6,445
    edited 2014-07-12 07:46
    Not dropped, makes C / Spin etc much better... and great for marketing :)
    David Betz wrote: »
    Has hub exec been dropped? I thought Chip said it would be in the new P2.
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2014-07-12 08:03
    Bill Henning wrote: »
    Not dropped, makes C / Spin etc much better... and great for marketing :)
    That's what I thought. Thanks for confirming it. Of course I know that things could change if Chip finds that hub exec doesn't fit well into his new design but it's good to know that it is still in the plans.
  • cgraceycgracey Posts: 14,208
    edited 2014-07-12 08:13
    We is!

    Yesterday, I got the booter program in the Prop2 talking to the PC. There seems to be one hang-up, yet, inhibiting loader downloading. I've been flushing minor bugs out for the last few days and I think I've maybe one or two to fix before I can start downloading from PNut.exe.

    Once I'm downloading, I'm going to get hubexec working. After that, the only think I'll need to add to the core is the hub-streaming I/O stuff. Then, there should just be some cog refinement work, the hub CORDIC system, and the pin smarts.

    Things have been going slowly, but once I get the ability to download from PNut.exe, I know things are going to accelerate.

    I'm glad to see that you guys are still here!
  • Bill HenningBill Henning Posts: 6,445
    edited 2014-07-12 08:18
    Thank you for the update!

    Ummm... I don't think we could even be chased off.
    cgracey wrote: »
    We is!

    Yesterday, I got the booter program in the Prop2 talking to the PC. There seems to be one hang-up, yet, inhibiting loader downloading. I've been flushing minor bugs out for the last few days and I think I've maybe one or two to fix before I can start downloading from PNut.exe.

    Once I'm downloading, I'm going to get hubexec working. After that, the only think I'll need to add to the core is the hub-streaming I/O stuff. Then, there should just be some cog refinement work, the hub CORDIC system, and the pin smarts.

    Things have been going slowly, but once I get the ability to download from PNut.exe, I know things are going to accelerate.

    I'm glad to see that you guys are still here!
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2014-07-12 08:23
    cgracey wrote: »
    We is!

    Yesterday, I got the booter program in the Prop2 talking to the PC. There seems to be one hang-up, yet, inhibiting loader downloading. I've been flushing minor bugs out for the last few days and I think I've maybe one or two to fix before I can start downloading from PNut.exe.

    Once I'm downloading, I'm going to get hubexec working. After that, the only think I'll need to add to the core is the hub-streaming I/O stuff. Then, there should just be some cog refinement work, the hub CORDIC system, and the pin smarts.

    Things have been going slowly, but once I get the ability to download from PNut.exe, I know things are going to accelerate.

    I'm glad to see that you guys are still here!
    I'm still here but not doing much Propeller programming lately. I ported a Basic interpreter that I wrote for the Propeller to the ATmega328p for someone who wanted it for a project they were doing. I tried to convince them to use the Propeller but without luck. Unfortunately, the 328p is cheaper. Anyway, avrdude is a pain to use. I like developing for the Propeller a lot better! :-)
  • ozpropdevozpropdev Posts: 2,793
    edited 2014-07-12 08:33
    Not planning on going anywhere Chip!
    refresh,refresh,refresh.... :):)
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2014-07-12 08:42
    Ha, ha, yes, refresh, refresh...Are we there yet?...refresh, refresh...Are we there yet...

    Still here. Looking forward to Chipmas again this year. If if it is only the FPGA image to check out.
  • BaggersBaggers Posts: 3,019
    edited 2014-07-12 08:46
    cgracey wrote: »
    I'm glad to see that you guys are still here!

    Waiting quietly and patiently :)

    Glad you're on the home straight :D.
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