Propeller 3 Unofficial Wishlist
Bill Henning
Posts: 6,445
After reading OBC's posting at http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=875762, I could not resist starting this thread.
My suggestions:
1) 64 bit cogs!
With 64 bit instructions, the 32 bits would easily allow adding 7 more bits to SRC and DST, for up to 64K 64 bit COG locations, and still leave 18 bits for other goodies.
2) 16 cogs
3) 1MB of hub memory, organized as 128K x 64
4) cogs have a 64 bit read and a 64 bit write register to their two "nearest" neighbours, ideally with 16 word FIFO's
Instruction set changes:
addition of RDXLONG / WRXLONG
addition of C{RD|WR}{LONG|WORD|BYTE} for reading/writing bytes, words, longs within the new 64 bit cog registers
one of the new extra instruction bits could be used to sign extend the new sixteen bit constants
architecture changes:
changing video, counter etc circuits to be 64 bit wide - waitvid then could take four 16 bit pixels / eight 8 bit pixels per location
ofcourse fast SPI-like modes for input and output, and addition of Manchester coding to allow at least 100BaseT
Ok, guys, your turn. Serious suggestions only please!
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www.mikronauts.com E-mail: mikronauts _at_ gmail _dot_ com 5.0" VGA LCD in stock!
Morpheus dual Prop SBC w/ 512KB kit $119.95, Mem+2MB memory/IO kit $89.95, both kits $189.95 SerPlug $9.95
Propteus and Proteus for Propeller prototyping 6.250MHz custom Crystals run Propellers at 100MHz
Las - Large model assembler Largos - upcoming nano operating system
Post Edited (Bill Henning) : 1/28/2010 7:10:23 PM GMT
My suggestions:
1) 64 bit cogs!
With 64 bit instructions, the 32 bits would easily allow adding 7 more bits to SRC and DST, for up to 64K 64 bit COG locations, and still leave 18 bits for other goodies.
2) 16 cogs
3) 1MB of hub memory, organized as 128K x 64
4) cogs have a 64 bit read and a 64 bit write register to their two "nearest" neighbours, ideally with 16 word FIFO's
Instruction set changes:
addition of RDXLONG / WRXLONG
addition of C{RD|WR}{LONG|WORD|BYTE} for reading/writing bytes, words, longs within the new 64 bit cog registers
one of the new extra instruction bits could be used to sign extend the new sixteen bit constants
architecture changes:
changing video, counter etc circuits to be 64 bit wide - waitvid then could take four 16 bit pixels / eight 8 bit pixels per location
ofcourse fast SPI-like modes for input and output, and addition of Manchester coding to allow at least 100BaseT
Ok, guys, your turn. Serious suggestions only please!
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www.mikronauts.com E-mail: mikronauts _at_ gmail _dot_ com 5.0" VGA LCD in stock!
Morpheus dual Prop SBC w/ 512KB kit $119.95, Mem+2MB memory/IO kit $89.95, both kits $189.95 SerPlug $9.95
Propteus and Proteus for Propeller prototyping 6.250MHz custom Crystals run Propellers at 100MHz
Las - Large model assembler Largos - upcoming nano operating system
Post Edited (Bill Henning) : 1/28/2010 7:10:23 PM GMT
Comments
OBC
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New to the Propeller?
Visit the: The Propeller Pages @ Warranty Void.
P.S. I won my bet that Prop 3 threads would be out before the Prop 2 was!!
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Computers are microcontrolled.
Robots are microcontrolled.
I am microcontrolled.
SX Spinning light display·
http://designedbymemicros.blogspot.com/
as a work-around in the meantime:
how about one of these industrial PC104-x486-boards and writing an prop-emulator for it?? ::--)))
best regards
Stefan
1. Don't even start thinking about it until we have a complete, professional tool chain and exhaustive docs for Props I and II.
Okay, I guess that's it: just the one item.
-Phil
Update: I nearly forgot, for fans of South Park:
2. ?
3. Profit!
1) even a 486DX-100 would not be able to emulate a single cog at full speed
2) even the newest quad core, SMT, i9xx series 3GHz+ processors would not be able to emulate a Prop II with deterministic timing; heck, they could not even fully emulate a single cogs video and timer circuitry accurately!
A realistic emulation would be a stack of very large, very fast FPGA boards.
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www.mikronauts.com E-mail: mikronauts _at_ gmail _dot_ com 5.0" VGA LCD in stock!
Morpheus dual Prop SBC w/ 512KB kit $119.95, Mem+2MB memory/IO kit $89.95, both kits $189.95 SerPlug $9.95
Propteus and Proteus for Propeller prototyping 6.250MHz custom Crystals run Propellers at 100MHz
Las - Large model assembler Largos - upcoming nano operating system
How can you think that a PIC can emulate a Prop?!? That's like expecting a bug to act like a human!
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Computers are microcontrolled.
Robots are microcontrolled.
I am microcontrolled.
SX Spinning light display·
http://designedbymemicros.blogspot.com/
Post Edited (microcontrolled) : 1/28/2010 8:02:13 PM GMT
64-bit
built in floating point (at the PASM level)
256X floating point PLL! (up to 1.28GHz)
Why not bump it to 32 cogs? Each cog with 2048 longs, group the cogs in the groups of eight. Each group has it's own shared memory, and then all four groups has a large portion of RAM it can access. So like L1/L2 cache and SDRAM!
We are looking at 41GigaFLOPS @64-bit!
8 counters per cog.
256 I/O pins
Use memristors for all the nonvolatile memory
I think we could fit this into the Pentium 3 style package.
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April, 2008: when I discovered the answers to all my micro-computational-botherations!
Some of my objects:
MCP3X0X ADC Driver - Programmable Schmitt inputs, frequency reading, and more!
Simple Propeller-based Database - Making life easier and more readable for all your EEPROM storage needs.
String Manipulation Library - Don't allow strings to be the bane of the Propeller, bend them to your will!
Fast Inter-Propeller Comm - Fast communication between two propellers (1.37MB/s @100MHz)!
256-bit(we might as well think big)
built in floating point (at the PASM level) - i agree entirely
256X floating point PLL! - also a must have
Why not bump it to 64 cogs? Each cog with 2M longs, group the cogs in the groups of eight. Each group has it's own shared memory(say 2G long), and then all 8 groups has a large portion of RAM it can access(2TLong).
Internal 16GHz crystal
We are looking at 8.2Tera FLOPS @ 256 bit
8 counters per cog.
512 I/O pins(port a and port b)
Use memristors for all the nonvolatile memory
Would have to make the silicone in 3D but I beleive this would be the most powerful procsser on earth and 200 of these in parallel would be the most powerful computer on earth.
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24 bit LCD Breakout Board now in. $24.99 has backlight driver and touch sensitive decoder.
If you have not already. Add yourself to the prophead map
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April, 2008: when I discovered the answers to all my micro-computational-botherations!
Some of my objects:
MCP3X0X ADC Driver - Programmable Schmitt inputs, frequency reading, and more!
Simple Propeller-based Database - Making life easier and more readable for all your EEPROM storage needs.
String Manipulation Library - Don't allow strings to be the bane of the Propeller, bend them to your will!
Fast Inter-Propeller Comm - Fast communication between two propellers (1.37MB/s @100MHz)!
I am serious. That would be one super hot chip to play with. Cooling it would not be fun though.
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24 bit LCD Breakout Board now in. $24.99 has backlight driver and touch sensitive decoder.
If you have not already. Add yourself to the prophead map
LOL! There are times I shouldn't read this forum! Like when I've got a mouthful of Dr. Pepper!
Had to clean up my screen!
OBC
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New to the Propeller?
Visit the: The Propeller Pages @ Warranty Void.
Thanks for the laugh.
- 4 cogs
- 16 kByte HubRam
- 20 Pins (~15 IOs)
- integrated Flash Program Memory
- integrated ADCs
- for 2.99$
And this is serious. I wish this much more than a Super Propeller.
Andy
Ha Ha! (Don't worry, I'll stop stealing the thread here, but as you can see from my avatar, I don't like PICs.
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Computers are microcontrolled.
Robots are microcontrolled.
I am microcontrolled.
SX Spinning light display·
http://designedbymemicros.blogspot.com/
Pamela Anderson already has this feature.
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Life may be "too short", but it's the longest thing we ever do.
People fear what they don't understand.
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Life may be "too short", but it's the longest thing we ever do.
Now let's think about this rationally... LOL
It's 2010 and it will take at least 5 years for the Prop III. Intel currently has 1 billion transistors on a chip, so using Moore's Law, we will be at 8 billion transistors. But Parallax will not have access to this latest technology, so let us presume it can place 1 billion transistors on a chip.
An on-chip xtal can be accurately trimmed with internal flash and the chip will run up to 1GHz. Each cog cycle is 1 instruction. There is an inbuilt RTC which can operate from a 1,000uF electrolytic for weeks without external components except the capacitor. A much smaller capacitor can be used for days.
IIRC ram takes 6 transistors per bit, so let us use half of the chip for ram --> 500,000,000 / 6 / 8 = 10MBytes so let us say 8MB to be sure
So let us have 4MB of hub ram and 4MB total cog ram. Also, we have 1MB of internal flash and 1MB of boot ROM.
Now let us be greedy with those other 0.5 billion transistors and have 256 I/O's all with ADC & DAC, etc. Also a much improved counter/video etc circuit per cog - we will have thought about all those things we cannot do with the fantastic Prop II counters by then.
And of course we all want a LOT of cogs now we know how to use them for all sorts of things in the Prop II. Of course it must be 64 bit RISC. So addressing in the cog is not an issue for Prop III.
Now, we want 64 cogs, but at 4MB that would only give us 1,000 instructions at 64 bits for a total of 64KB per cog.
But we are much smarter now and we have organised our cogs in groups of 4, so we can steal blocks of 16KB from adjacent cogs. This means we can have 3 dwarf cogs with 16KB and 1 super cog with 208KB (>3,000 instructions) or only 1 super-plus cog (with no dwarf cogs) with access to the whole 256KB and the 4 counter/video circuits. The dwarf cogs can relinquish their hub slots to improve hub access for the super cogs (as all cogs can communicate via 256 x 64 bit registers shared between all cogs). This means we can have only 16 super cogs competing for hub access. Optional priority hub access is allowed for super cogs. Optional unused hub cycle access is allowed for dwarf cogs (only gains access if a super cog does not require the cycle, otherwise it waits for a free hub cycle).
Of course, any cog can act as a·buffer/fifo cog for any/all other cogs. It communicates with the other cogs via 256 x64 bit shared registers and hub ram as a normal/super/dwarf cog.
Oh, and one last thing - we need to lock Chip from reading this thread until the Prop II is done (sorry Chip)
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Links to other interesting threads:
· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz
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Searider
What's that you say... wait til the Prop IV???
Actually, I'd just settle for a Prop II right now. Ken/Chip... you hearing this?
Bill
@BradC: What?
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Computers are microcontrolled.
Robots are microcontrolled.
I am microcontrolled.
SX Spinning light display·
http://designedbymemicros.blogspot.com/
==============================================================
From the Sandbox Post : http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=874883
Posted 1/22/2010 4:06 PM (GMT -4) Edit post
The ultra-small revolution has begun with the invention of a new laser that will allow light to be used on a computer chip. Assoc. Professor David Moss, a senior researcher at the University of Sydney, leads an international team which has developed a multiple wavelength laser on a silicon chip that produces light to process and transmit information, and in doing so will speed up computing.
"The on-chip light source will be key to enabling the simultaneous transmission of multiple data channels either on-chip or between chips in a single optical fibre, each at a different wavelength," says Moss, adding that this technology will ultimately provide the consumer with cheaper and faster computers.
Complete Article:
www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20102201-20527.html
Looks like Prop 2 is a dinosaur already but Prop 3 should interesting.
Typically the more complex and advanced processes you use on the inside of the chip the more complex the external circuitry needs to be to support that chip. Isn't this supposed to be a MCU? Something people can use on simple boards they design themselves?
The Prop 2 as I understand it runs on 1.8v for the core and 3.3v for the i/o pins. So already it's more stuff you have to deal with when making a project with it. Going to the extremes you guys want in the Prop 3 could lead to things like they have to do on PC motherbaords now where there is a big portion of the board just there to deliver all the different power needs and dynamically adjust it.
I know I'm being kind of downer here, but I think it would be more interesting to think about things that could realistically be done in an MCU that can still be utilized by hobby folks.
Also, until we actually get a Prop 2, how can we even know what can't be done on it and thus have new features to wish for in a Prop 3?
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Check out the Propeller Wiki·and contribute if you can.
* Internals suspended in space
* most parts have no physical matter
* interface moves in free space
* multi-hyper dimensional but in curved space
* does time travel
* sections nano-bot based
* can double as a transporter
* faster than a speeding supercomputer
* more powerful than a locomotive
* more memory than a truck load of TBs
* a transformer - one package transforms from SIP to DIP to SMT to ...
* ultra low cost (free if you make a domain project with it)
* programs in ULTRA (Utra easy, ultra simple, ultra small learning curve, ultra fast, ultra efficient...)
* uses the configurable Hyper-Cog (exponential to n^n cogs)
* ULP driven - ultra low power, runs on room ambient light
* has internal matter/antimatter drive to run centuries at a time
* doubles as a Dilithium crystal for star ship warp drives
* high density (contains alternate universes occupying the same space)
Did I miss anything?
humanoido
Post Edited (humanoido) : 1/29/2010 11:23:14 AM GMT
* Anti gravity generator so we can leap tall buildings in a single bound.
* Connections to dilithium/matter/antimatter drive to power external hardware (house, car, aircar, etc.)
* Replicator function added to transporter so it can self replicate as well as producing other needs (Tea, Earl Grey, hot)
* Automatic silicon creation so that it can make an infinite amount of other chips, including itself, that appear if you load in the replication program and set it under your pillow overnight. When you wake up the next morning you will find a MAX3232 or whatever you wanted under there along with the original chip. You won't even need to program in the part number, because it will read your brainwaves.
* No I/O pins, you just set it on your desk and you can control any electronic componant or device within 10 feet, all with just a few line of code and an infinate number of controllable devices.
* Because of it's brain-reading capability it will program itself by reading what you want it to do from your brain. This will allow any Joe off the street to program this chip, and Parallax will get rich at the same time hobbyists will be disregarded.
* And I almost forgot: the ability to transform into a spaceship.
P.S. Bill won't like the direction this thread has taken.....
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Computers are microcontrolled.
Robots are microcontrolled.
I am microcontrolled.
SX Spinning light display·
http://designedbymemicros.blogspot.com/
Kind regards, Samuel Lourenço