Re:The J1 Forth CPU
by _yosefk on Wednesday April 15, 2015 @07:35AM
(#9380201)
Interesting signal processing - perhaps.
I mentioned DRAM because
* An FPGA could do it and the GA chips probably can't,
* You can't do a whole lot of embedded DSP apps without DRAM - it's not a question of "trying to be a PC", you just need memory to store stuff :-) and SRAM is too expensive.
Without DRAM, you're pretty much limited to what you call "streaming"; a whole lot of things don't work without being able to keep a working set in RAM. I don't argue that the chip is useless, just that it's useless in a huge range of use cases including many embedded ones, which is a sharp contrast to the connotations of its self-description as a "multi-computer chip"... And BTW even a really really dumb DSP chip can usually do DRAM :-)
I look at it as "an array of incredibly weak and energy-efficient cores" :-)
I mentioned DRAM because
* An FPGA could do it and the GA chips probably can't,
* You can't do a whole lot of embedded DSP apps without DRAM - it's not a question of "trying to be a PC", you just need memory to store stuff :-) and SRAM is too expensive.
Without DRAM, you're pretty much limited to what you call "streaming"; a whole lot of things don't work without being able to keep a working set in RAM. I don't argue that the chip is useless, just that it's useless in a huge range of use cases including many embedded ones, which is a sharp contrast to the connotations of its self-description as a "multi-computer chip"... And BTW even a really really dumb DSP chip can usually do DRAM :-)
I look at it as "an array of incredibly weak and energy-efficient cores" :-)