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Guest Pages |
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Brian's CNC Site | Brian's Tesla Lab |
GenAPro continues to welcome two additions to the site. These areas demonstrate the hard work of Brian Foley and his active mind and hands. |
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From the inventor I created this site in 1999. Except for this home page I have done little to update it since, having plenty of engineering to concentrate on. And yet whenever I reread it I find most parts still hold up pretty well. Even the pages which quote various industry facts and figures from 1998, such as the Executive Summary, illustrate general trends which remain timely.
One item of note about the summary is its size. Although the rule of thumb is to limit an executive summary to at most two pages, I could never get it below five, simply because the scope must cover not merely a single product or widgit, but an entire industry segment.
Multicore Multicore Multicore |
Ah yes, what would we do without new buzzwords? And yet the fact is, this was a multicore architecture before the term became popular.
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Oh No! The end on an era? A story in the February 15, 2007 EDN talks about how the 16 bit micro world is being assailed from above and below by 32 and 8 bit processors. Is there any hope (or market) left for the sweet sixteens? Actually the article's message isn't quite as drastic as its title, Putting the squeeze on 16-bit processors . implies. While Intel has recently abandoned the 16 bit embedded market, other manufacturers such as Freescale are upgrading their offerings.
The sixteen bit world still offers advantages in power consumption, data-intensive processing, and task-intensive control. Most Digital-Signal Controllers (DSC) are currently 16 bits.
One point for the FSA is that it is meant primarily to provide rapid control to logic subsystems on a chip. The data width of such subsystems are not restricted to 16 bits. They can be 32, 64, 1000 bits, any size at all.
And "rapid" is the word for that control: the Flexible System Architecture core is a small, nimble sequencer. Most of the instructions decode from memory after only one gate (or mux) delay. And its own control logic is simple. As mentioned below, the FSA machine language is its own microcode.
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You load sixteen bits, and what do you get Sixteen bits is the very best word size for low level control; I'm absolutely convinced of this. Yes, if you're doing long computations or need floating point, you'll want more bits, but to control something? If you need more than 16 bits, you aren't thinking the problem through! Compared to 32 bits, a 16 bit core takes up less die space (especially when busing is factored in), runs cooler (and therefore slightly faster), has half the leakage current, and is easier to program, allowing for faster design cycles.
"The 16-bit-microcontroller market lackes a standard architecture that dominates the device space; it comprises proprietary architectures." EDN Magazine, February 17, 2005 (see: Reaching down: 32-bit processors aim for 8 bits ). While 8051 clones dominate at eight bits and the ARM architecture rules the 32-bit embedded world, nobody seems able to grab more than 20% of the $4-billion and growing (2004) sixteen bit market. It's the Wild West: a frontier of opportunity.
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Almost ready for Prime Time I have completed Version 7 of the FSA Simulator, an admittedly bare-bones yet workable C-language based software development system. I'm working on updating documentation and IP protection, and then ... ?
An Open Letter |
Dear Visitor
This
IS
the future of computing: A
parallel
architecture
with an enforced hierarchy for
true security,
implemented as plug-in
modules
simular to memory units today.
It may or may not turn out to be the
Flexible System Architecture
that leads this revolution, but the days of the current commercial offerings
have to be numbered.
This is a very flexible computing approach. In some
ways, it's similar to ASIC technology, but more structured. One could
say ASIC is working with a blank sheet of paper, while this invention is
working with graph paper. On the other hand, this new approach provides
much more design freedom than trying to work within the block diagrams of
conventional processors.
If I were to sum it up in two words, I would call it a
"control architecture."
Probably the most unique property of the
FSA
is that its microcode and assembly languages are one and the same; yet,
while drawing on the power of microcode, it remains an easy to learn,
small word environment. Internally, this results in a fragmentation into
a very fine-grained parallel processing system, mathematically scaleable
from this detailed world of low level circuitry up to (theoretically) any
size computer.
Enough about technology. What are its market possibilities? Being
a general-purpose item makes its payoff potentially huge. The same
modular design can do work ranging from simple appliance control to
supercomputing. The main downside is that the development cost for
universal computer architectures also runs very high. Somewhat alleviating
this is that it doesn't have to address every possible application
area at once; it can stand in and hit singles awhile before it swings
for a grand slam.
There is another aspect to the FSA having to do with its unique
layout when multiple processors are used for parallel processing.
I believe that
highly secure systems
can be developed around such
an array. I am not an expert in such systems so I may be going
out on a limb here, but the instruction set lends itself to a very
tightly controlled hierarchical layering, with lots of checks and
monitoring possible.
I'm the classic lone
inventor operating with minimal resources and few industry contacts, but with
a competitive product only a short development stretch away from
market.
My ultimate aim is to implement the full FSA design (it's not
all that large). Some early versions may be smaller to save
costs (and size & power), but I wish to be associated with
people who become passionate about ultimately creating the
complete system.
Bob Loy, Founder
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