[sdiy] Propeller chip from Parallax

[Batz Goodfortune]

Y-ellow Adam 'n' all.

At 10:35 PM 3/15/07 -0600, Adam Schabtach wrote:

>3) no C/C++. The SPIN language doesn't look altogether bad at first glance,
>and I understand the benefits of a language designed around the hardware,
>but I'd really rather work with a language I already know well. I'd rather
>not get partway into a coding effort and discover that there's something
>about the language that drives me bats.

I'm already Batz so I'm guessing it wouldn't be a problem. :)

I agree with most of this except the stuff about "C". I can't program in 
high level languages for shit so I'm kinda glad they didn't lock it down to 
something as archaic as C. One of the main reasons I can't get into bloody 
AVRs is because every damn example I need to look at is written in C. Call 
me old school but I'm use to actually optimizing my code. Trying to think 
ahead as I write it.

(Hey if Harry can hate BBDs and breadboards, I can hate C.)

At first glance I love this thing. It's like. "Hey Baby, where you been all 
my life?" On the other hand. "Oh yeah. Another freakin' micro to waste my 
time and money on?"

And lest we forget that the afore mentioned ARM started life in exactly the 
same way. In fact I felt exactly the same about that when it first landed. 
When the "A" stood for "Acorn"

I don't believe you can really mention this and a transputer in the same 
sentence. Well except for that last one of course. On the plus side, at the 
time, a 10meg serial interconnecting, massively parallel network was almost 
too good to be true. By the time it was released it was a bit ho-hum. But 
the real drawback was that developing a transputer system was almost as 
expensive as a serious coke habit and didn't make you feel like you were in 
any way important. Prior to their release, Inmos boasted that the name 
"Transputer" was an amalgam of "Transistor" and "Computer." (Yeah no shit) 
But the philosophy was that it would be a small, powerful computing device 
and used ubiquitously and as cheaply as a lowly transistor would be. 
Bollocks! A base level transputer devel board was around the 2 grand mark 
when it came out.

In short, the transputer never lived up to it's claims or even it's own 
potential. I shudder every time I think of programming in OCAM.

The ARM. Now there was a processor. Those Acorn guys developed it within 
about  8 months starting from scratch. They had a simple idea. Everything 
should come in 32s. Make it 32bits wide. Make every register as good as any 
other register. Let the damn developer decide how she's going to use it. 
They stripped out all the crap and it ran blindingly fast. As testament to 
the somewhat open and flexible design, they are the embedded weapon of 
choice these days. Not just going strong but totally wiping the floor.

The thing that struck me about reading the blurb on the Parallax site is 
that these guys were waxing lyrical about their achievement in the same 
tones that the acorn crowed were when the ARM first hit town. What Acorn 
did was considered equally unbelievable at the time.

As to architectural issues. In this case I see no real problem wasting one 
of the cores doing menial tasks in leu of having dedicated hardware. Some 
of us have been having to do that kind of thing for years anyway. Then 
there's the example of the cypress PsoC. Another processor I've been 
banging my head against. In concept it's brilliant. You have a blindingly 
fast 8 bit core coupled with programmable logic blocks. So instead of 
having dedicated I/O structures, you just build what you need. The usage of 
the programmable logic depends on how complex your I/O tasks actually are.

I don't know which approach is better in any given situation but it seems 
to me that devoting a core or 2 just to handle I/O amounts to roughly the 
same thing.

What does seem at odds here is that they wax lyrical about how they hand 
optimized the thing at damn near the molecular level and then jack it up 
with a modularized, inefficient programming language. Which is anathema to 
their original design philosophy. Not that I have a problem with this 
exactly and this is the kind of thing Parallax are known for, but it just 
seems a bit strange.

On the other hand, it also occurred to me that this may in fact be a rather 
brilliant philosophy in the long run. Think about it. You pluck your new 
baby animal fresh out of the zoo and you're not sure about the intricacies 
of care and feeding. But you can throw a few quick bricks together and get 
something happening. You can then tinker from there all the way back down 
to the metal at your leisure. All the time knowing that you've got a base 
level functioning system. This is how most of us old school bit bolters got 
into the game in the first place. We started with some 8 bit machine. A z80 
platform, maybe an apple ][. And then we started to explore it.

My original machine was a z80 based thing called a Microbee. The usual sort 
of thing where you had BASIC in ROM and it doubled as the BIOS. But I knew 
where all the back doors were so I use to confound my fellow Bee-keepers by 
being able to task switch between several running programs at once. 
Something I didn't see again till I met my first Apple Mac. So I'm thinking 
here that what they have achieved is an easy way of elbowing your way into 
the things. And that can only be a good thing IMHO.

As for price. These things are as cheap, if not cheaper than your average 
AVR.   And on the face of it, seem to offer a lot more bang for buck. It 
remains to be seen of course but it does seems there is something of a 
trade off here. You don't get all that lovely I/O choice or on-board 
resources of the AVR. And you don't get the specialized versions for music 
and portable devices that you do with the ARM. On the other hand, I've been 
banging my head against AVRs, PsoCs and ARMs for the past 2 years and 
getting precisely nowhere. The development systems have cost me an arm and 
a leg. Everything seems to be designed to keep you at arm's length from 
what's really going on. Unless you're a recent graduate from computing 
school or something. (Maybe) The reality is that there's a huge investment 
involved in time and tools for these things and it gets worse if you want a 
fast track. And I can tell you right now I'm sick of having to buy new 
device programmers every time fucking ATMEL change their underpants.

Let me make this clear for the record. All of these processors are pretty 
good. And I'd hate to have to go back to the days of running a 6502 at 
1meg. FLASH is da' bomb! But I use to be able to afford the time and tools 
to tinker. Most of this stuff has become a fucking millstone and I'd be 
ever so grateful if this Propeller thing could save my bacon.

<sound=thunder>
The Batzman has spoken.
</sound>

They're going to wheel me back to my cell now.

Be absolutely Icebox.

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