linuxaudio.org

On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 08:07:46PM +0000, Kelly Hirai wrote:
> fpga seems a natural way to express in silicon, data flow languages like

quoted text
> pd, chuck, csound, ecasound. regarding the stretch, the idea that one

> could code in c or c++ might streamline refactoring code, but i'm still

> trying to wrap my head around designing graph topology for code that is

> tied to the program counter register. nor do i see the right peripherals

> for sound. perhaps the g.711 codec support is software implementation

> and could be rewritten. need stats on the 8 bnc to dvi adapter audio port.

There are many ways to use an fpga. I've got a friend who's a real

wizard in this game, and his approach is quite unusual but very

effective.

In most cases, after having analysed the problem at hand, he'll design

one or more ad-hoc processors in vhdl. They are always very minimal,

maybe having 5 to 20 carefully chosen instructions, usually all of them

conditional (ARM style), and coded if necessary in very wide instruction

words so there's no microcode and these processors are incredibly fast.

It takes him a few hours to define such a processor, and a few more hours

more to create an assembler for it in Python. Then he starts coding the

required algorithms using these processors.

If necessary, he'll revise the processor design until it's perfectly

matched to the problem. In all cases I've watched, this results in

something that most other designers couldn't even dream of in terms

of speed and efficiency - not only of the result, but also of the

design process and hence the economics.

All of this is of course very 'politically incorrect' - he just throws

away the whole canon of 'high level tools' or rather replaces it with

his own vision of it - with results that I haven't seen matched ever.
Ciao,
--

FA
A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia.

It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris

and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)
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