Again: Building my Own Laptop

Several times there have been requests and attempts for building a computer having Forth as Operating System.

There are Open Source projects in the making. Today I read about this one:

"Building my Own Laptop"

Quotation:

We are building an open laptop, with some wacky features in it for hackers like me.

This is a lengthy project. Fortunately, ARM CPUs are getting fast enough, a nd Moore?s Law is slowing down, so that even if it took a year or so to c omplete, I won?t be left with a woefully useless design. Today?s state of the art ARM CPUs ? quad-core with GHz+ performance levels ? is good enough for most day-to-day code development, email checking, browsing etc.. .

Of course, a feature of a build-it-yourself laptop is that all the design d ocumentation is open, so others of sufficient skill and resources can also build it. The hardware and its sub-components are picked so as to make this the most practically open hardware laptop I could create using state of th e art technology. You can download, without NDA, the datasheets for all the components, and key peripheral options are available so it?s possible to build a complete firmware from source with no opaque blobs.

Source:

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My favorite would be a laptop with an RTX2000-like microprocessor instead o f the ARM. A friend of mine had developed such a computer with the RTX2000, twenty years ago, everything wirewrapped. It's a pity that I didn't take t he chance to make a PCB out of it. This time is gone, and today the only mi croprocessor which comes near to an RTX2000 style microprocessor is the ARM .

In my opinion an ARM based laptop with Forth as Operating System is feasibl e. There may be parts of the I/O software written in C needed to be used, but it will be manageable to access this I/O from a Forth OS via entry points.

Reply to
visualforth
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wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com...

Yes, mostly by "gavino" ...

All of the electronics discussion related to computer motherboards on comp.lang.forth and comp.lang.asm.x86 of late are beginning to annoy me. No one here, except me, seems to know anything about electronic manufacturing. However, it's been a while since I worked in electronics industry. So, I added a couple of other newsgroups ...

The OP's complete post here (new and old style Google Groups):

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Isn't "wacky" just a euphemism for "hack" ... ?

Yes, ARM microprocessors are becoming faster, but they're also requiring more power to do so. x86 designs are reducing their power consumption at the same time. Once the ARMs reach x86 performance levels, they won't have any advantage.

Myth? Even Gordon Moore predicted his law would slow down. He was wrong. Did something change?

Wrong. By the time it takes to "complete" your project, i.e., many years, all the hardware you just coded for will be obsolete. All hardware requires a huge amount of custom software to make it work correctly. I.e., if you buy a new PC or laptop, you'll have to start all over again in five years, or you'll need a team of people to continually keep the code current.

GHz+ performance level is overkill for those tasks.

A DX4-133Mhz was good enough, except for video. AMD K6-2 500Mhz was good enough with video.

Good luck with that. I.e., highly unlikely.

Such a design with likely use COTS ("common-off-the-shelf") components, such as standard PC chipsets, standard PC GPU's, etc.

*ALL* of that stuff is proprietary and closed. If the project is serious about that, you'll need to find, and likely pay handsomely, an experienced FPGA circuit designer to design custom logic.

Good luck with that. I.e., highly unlikely.

If the project uses custom FPGA's, everyone attempting to build it will need either 1) an FPGA programmer or 2) buy programmed FPGA's from the project. If the project uses COTS, e.g., AMD or Intel motherboard chipset, then you'll have to find a way to purchase the components in small quantities.

Delirious?

Well, after seeing his webpage, he's clearly not delirious in terms of "using state of the art technology". But, he's *solidly* delirious in terms of "others of sufficient skill and resources can also build it." He clearly has access to a motherboard manufacturer - needed to get a motherboard manufactured - and is part of an electronics manufacturing firm somewhere - to get high-tech parts in small quantities for prototypes. I.e., he's probably an EE working for a major electronics firm. His motherboard is an **UNREALISTIC** achievement for a hobbyist. That's a modern multi-layer motherboard with current surface mount components. Firstly, "you" - any given hobbyist - don't know enough about electronics to design one yourself. Circuit board design is a highly-specialized trade. Secondly, "you" don't have access to the professional grade design software for required to design one. No, a professional motherboard manufacturer *will not* accept designs from open-source software even if in the correct file formats. Thirdly, "you" can't get the modern components. So, you wouldn't be able to get one of those manufactured. Given you can't do those things, you're going to have to buy a motherboard he's had manufactured and a part set from him. Even if you could buy the motherboard and parts from him, you couldn't assemble the board yourself. Doing so requires access to wave-soldering machines for through-hole components and SMT oven-soldering machines for the SMT components. Also, small electronic manufacturing firms have to submit minimum orders well into the thousands before a board manufacturer will even consider a run of boards.

For small quantities, wirewrapped or point-to-point or grid-style board or perfboard is the way to go. Unfortunately, a modern multi-layer board has way too many connections for any hobbyist method to work correctly. The length of the wire traces affect capacitance, resistance, and inductance. Engineers generally like to keep the traces as short as possible. The multiple layers helps with that.

Everything is feasible. Is it worthy? That's the question you should be asking.

I.e., if the OS is slower, the same speed, or even slightly faster than an a hobbyist x86 OS in assembly or Linux, is there point to using Forth? (No.) It must be _significantly_ better in some way. Cost can be that factor, but that's not the case here. He's used some very recent components.

If the OS must be partially coded in C, is there any point to having any of it coded in Forth? (Not really.)

Rod Pemberton

Reply to
Rod Pemberton

Den 31-12-2012 10:49, Rod Pemberton skrev:

Of course they will. It's a business. You pay, they Play:

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Same story with CAM and 3D-printing - today there are many manufacturers that will run your designs from CAD files.

Reply to
Frithiof Andreas Jensen

Was everything I read in the 70s and 80s wrong?

He predicted the number of elements per IC would double every year, and it did from 1959 to the early 80s.

In the 70s, everyone said we would hit a wall, probably in the 80s. It was pointed out that if progress did not slow, we would have billion-transistor chips by 2000. It did take several years longer.

When we hit the wall in the 80s it was said that Carver Meade rewrote the book on processes, and enabled continued progress.

But that progress was reduced to doubling every 18 months, and recently every 2 years.

Every citation of "Moore's Law" in the 70s said "every year", but people keep redefining it. Sure, it will last forever if you redefine it.

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Reply to
Tom Del Rosso

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We are now nearing these newer limitations.

We will end up on optical computers before long. Then the march starts all over again.

Reply to
The Keeper of the Key to The Locks

In 1965 Moore observed that growth was doubling every year and he saw no reason for it not to continue for 10 years. So extrapolating beyond

1975 is outside of Moore's law. That said, I found a graph on the wikipedia site that seems to be showing a measurement of microprocessors from 1971 to 2011, 40 years. In this time the transistor count has grown from 2300 to 2.6 billion. If I did the math right transistor density is doubling every two years.

This graph shows little variation from this slope over the last 40 years. So I would say that Moore's law likely held during the 10 years he expected it to and has been slightly declining since, but has been pretty consistent over the last 40 years at this lower rate. I don't see any reduction in the rate in more recent years, in fact it looks like there was some recovery of the rate of growth over the last 12 or

15 years from a slump in the 90's.

Is there some distortion to the curve because of using only microprocessor data and not memory, etc?

Rick

Reply to
rickman

Sorry, forgot to post the link to the graph. Here is the Moore's Law page with the image.

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Rick

Reply to
rickman

Possibly. In I computed the price/bit of DRAM (from 1983 to 2002), and got an average halving in 17 months.

- anton

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Reply to
Anton Ertl

Regardless of whether the curve is softening a little or not, I am amazed that it has lasted as long as it has. Lately I have been hearing that we may really be reaching the end of what can be done "easily", meaning it is getting a lot harder to keep extending that curve. I understand we will be seeing some fundamental limits becoming real problems around 10 nm... but I have heard that song play on the radio before.

From what I've heard, the real issues are not advances in process technology, but that we don't have any good use for more transistors in CPUs or more CPUs on a chip. Plus, the market has been changing so that more transistors aren't what is needed, but less power consumption for the highly portable devices.

I was a bit surprised by the huge adoption of mobile computing over the last 10 years. Having gotten over my surprise, I expect the PC to become a much smaller player to the handheld and table form factors with the resulting emphasis on very low power and the resulting change in emphasis in processing technology from density to power consumption.

Rick

Reply to
rickman

Indeed.

That's an old song, too.

I've been hearing that song for a couple of decades, too.

The reality is that we can't know what the next "big thing" is. We do know it's not the current "big thing".

Reply to
krw

Not sure why you say that is a "couple of decades" old. In '93 they were still pushing for "longer, lower, wider" to quote the auto industry's motto during the years when they blithely promoted fancier cars with shiny doodads instead of safety or lower pollution. PCs didn't reach their peak power dissipation until they were over 100 Watts in what, 2000 something? Now they hardly have a PC CPU that uses 100 Watts. I think even the ultra powerful server CPUs try to keep the power consumption down as it costs more to cool the equipment than it does to power it.

Rick

Reply to
rickman

Perhaps not '93, but by '95 the main issue of PCs had turned to power. It didn't get fixed, mainly because the packaging people were better than anyone gave the credit for.

Just because the problem wasn't "solved" (it really never was - people just got bored with balls-to-the-wall performance), doesn't mean it wasn't a primary concern.

Reply to
krw

FPGAs are programmed in the field not in the factory, every time you reset the device you need to reprogram the FPGA.

I'm not not sure what a "professional motherboard manufacturer' is but the likes of PCBCart will manufacture the boards I doodle up in (gEDA) PCB

Its not hard to open a "cash" account with the three big online suppliers (digikey, mouser, farnell) You may need to register a one-man business first.

throug-hole can be soldered wih a soldering iron, as can leaded SMD (like SOIC). (lead as in wire, not as in Pb) Non-leaded like QFN and BGA require an oven, with a controlled temperature profile. an ordinary kitchen appliance with a conscious operator watching the temperature and the clock can probably fit the bill if he's only making one.

the more more you order the cheaper for each. for the price to be competitive it will need a large order.

only two stacks, and tiny ones at that, if you like stacks why not use a M68000 instead?

forth is an incremental compiler hardware drivers can probably be done in assembler and forth.

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Reply to
Jasen Betts

I'm not sure what your point is. There was a tradeoff between building chips which were larger and ran faster and chips that used less power. The fact that they continued to build the faster chips and didn't build the lower power ones says to me they are only now being forced by the market to go for low power at the expense of performance.

My point is that power will be the primary issue with CPUs in the coming years. Even today many are not so happy with cell phones that have to be charged more than once a day. Processing speed will be taking a secondary seat to power consumption and the product mix in the market will reflect that; fewer desktops and laptops with more tablets, PDAs and cell phones.

Rick

Reply to
rickman

Who knows, bloated inefficient software may become unacceptable.

Reply to
Richard Owlett

Not bloody likely. The demand is for a new generation of phones every six months. That's hardly conducive to any rigorous development cycle and I don't see it changing.

Reply to
krw

In article , rickman writes: fore.

Servers can always use more CPUs per chip.

Servers are power limited too. That's nice since they don't have to design separate CPUs any more.

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Reply to
Hal Murray

I see 2 interesting limits coming soon:

The width of a line will get below the diameter of an atom.

The cost of a fab line will exceed the GDP.

I'm not sure which one will happen first.

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Reply to
Hal Murray

Moore's law is "doubling the number of transistors". There is still a third dimension, if you end up with physical limits on a flat die, you can start stacking transistors in two layers - this still would qualify as "doubling".

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Reply to
Bernd Paysan

It certainly shows.

How could they tell? A Gerber file is a Gerber file is a Gerber file. There should be nothing in there to identify its origin. Same for Excellon drill files.

Nonsense.

Nonsense. Hand soldering of SMT components is routinely done every day. I dare say you couldn't spot the difference between one of my hand soldered assemblies and a reflow oven assembly.

Through-hole components were *designed* to be hand soldered (by lines of girls, sitting at benches, with feed guns).

Rubbish. I get quotes for runs of tens all the time. My usual order for small assemblies is "as many as will fit on a standard panel".

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Reply to
Fred Abse

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