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I want to bring my knowledge about Forth processors up to date, so I'm
posting some questions.

Who is currently selling Forth processors?

What happened to forthchip.com?

Is there a community that is actively involved in discussing and/or
developing FPGA-based Forth chips, or more generally, stack
machines?

Has anyone done any substantial DSP work in Forth?  Are there libraries
of code available?

How about hardware Forth implementations that include dedicated DSP
hardware?

Thanks in advance!

--

Davka

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Davka wrote:
> 
> I want to bring my knowledge about Forth processors up to date, so I'm
> posting some questions.
> 
> Who is currently selling Forth processors?
> 
> What happened to forthchip.com?
> 
> Is there a community that is actively involved in discussing and/or
> developing FPGA-based Forth chips, or more generally, stack
> machines?

You will get a lot of replies from at least one of the groups you posted
to.  But from what I can tell, there is only a small collection of Forth
chips or cores that have been done.  The effort is not mainstream and so
it is not cohesive in any way that I can see.  

If you want to reach into the past, HP used to make a minicomputer that
was stack oriented.  I don't know anything about the design other than
it was in the days of LSI rather than VLSI.  Geeze, we must be working
on SuperUltraLSI by now!  

> Has anyone done any substantial DSP work in Forth?  Are there libraries
> of code available?

Again, I think you will find that forth is very much not mainstream for
DSP.  In general, DSP does not favor any typical processing
archtecture.  That is why they design chips just for DSP.  If you want
to do DSP, then I suggest that you learn about DSP.  If you want to use
Forth, then do that.  But I would not expect to see Forth be a
significant benifit when doing DSP. 

 
> How about hardware Forth implementations that include dedicated DSP
> hardware?

That would not be hard to do in an FPGA.  Or you can run Forth on a DSP
chip.  The latter might gain you more benifit depending your DSP
application.  Some DSP apps are much better done on an FPGA.  It depends
on whether you can make use of multiple MAC units or if just the typical
one or two found in a DSP chip will do. 

Davka

-- 

Rick "rickman" Collins

r...@XYarius.com
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design      URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave                               301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110                 301-682-7666 FAX

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In article <T%XXb.70$p...@news.uswest.net>, m...@hotmail.com 
says...

>Is there a community that is actively involved in discussing and/or
>developing FPGA-based Forth chips, or more generally, stack
>machines?

Our motion control system runs a subset of Forth in a PLD. 
It is a very simple 16 bit two stack Harvard architecture
RISC processor that uses less than 128 macro cells.
Execution speed with the slowest parts is 25Mips Code 6Mips Forth.
It has 128 spare macro cells that run at 50Mhz for customer options.
such as encoders(6@10Mhz), step&direction(4axis@1Mhz), data capture(100M 
samples/sec), PWMs, etc.       

>How about hardware Forth implementations that include dedicated DSP
>hardware?

Do you want the Forth to supervise a set of DSPs, or be a DSP?

jrh

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On Sun, 15 Feb 2004 21:52:01 -0700, "Davka"
<m...@hotmail.com> wrote:

>Who is currently selling Forth processors?
MPE is selling a VHDL clone of the RTX2000 for use in FPGAs.

Stephen

--
Stephen Pelc, s...@INVALID.mpeltd.demon.co.uk
MicroProcessor Engineering Ltd - More Real, Less Time
133 Hill Lane, Southampton SO15 5AF, England
tel: +44 (0)23 8063 1441, fax: +44 (0)23 8033 9691
web: http://www.mpeltd.demon.co.uk - free VFX Forth downloads

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"jrh" <n...@spam.com> wrote in message
news:Si_Xb.57494$P17.17621@fed1read03...
> Do you want the Forth to supervise a set of DSPs, or be a DSP?
I want the Forth to direct the operation of a multiply-and-accumulate
module, and to
have access to a fast complex multiply.

-Davka

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"Davka" <m...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:T%XXb.70$p...@news.uswest.net...
> I want to bring my knowledge about Forth processors up to date, so I'm
> posting some questions.

[...]

Have you seen http://www.ultratechnology.com/chips.htm ?

I used to have a rather soft spot for the Harris RTX
processors, which is more than I can say for FORTH which
I regard as an invention of the devil ;-)
--
Jonathan Bromley, Consultant

DOULOS - Developing Design Know-how
VHDL * Verilog * SystemC * Perl * Tcl/Tk * Verification * Project Services

Doulos Ltd. Church Hatch, 22 Market Place, Ringwood, Hampshire, BH24 1AW, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1425 471223                    mail: j...@doulos.com
Fax: +44 (0)1425 471573                           Web: http://www.doulos.com

The contents of this message may contain personal views which
are not the views of Doulos Ltd., unless specifically stated.

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Jonathan Bromley wrote:
> 
> "Davka" <m...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:T%XXb.70$p...@news.uswest.net...
> > I want to bring my knowledge about Forth processors up to date, so I'm
> > posting some questions.
> 
> [...]
> 
> Have you seen http://www.ultratechnology.com/chips.htm ?
> 
> I used to have a rather soft spot for the Harris RTX
> processors, which is more than I can say for FORTH which
> I regard as an invention of the devil ;-)

	De gustibus non disputandum est.

> --
> Jonathan Bromley, Consultant
> 



-- 
Julian V. Noble
Professor Emeritus of Physics
j...@lessspamformother.virginia.edu
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/~jvn/

   "God is not willing to do everything and thereby take away
    our free will and that share of glory that rightfully belongs
    to us."  -- N. Machiavelli, "The Prince".

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On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 10:34:35 -0000, "Jonathan Bromley"
<j...@doulos.com> wrote:

>I used to have a rather soft spot for the Harris RTX
>processors, which is more than I can say for FORTH which
>I regard as an invention of the devil ;-)

An RTX2000 clone core is available from us in VHDL for FPGAs. A
C compiler is also available. The CPU runs at 20 MIPs in a
Xilinx Spartan. This is twice as fast as the original Harris
(Intersil) part, with an interrupt latency of 200ns before
starting useful work.

Stephen

--
Stephen Pelc, s...@INVALID.mpeltd.demon.co.uk
MicroProcessor Engineering Ltd - More Real, Less Time
133 Hill Lane, Southampton SO15 5AF, England
tel: +44 (0)23 8063 1441, fax: +44 (0)23 8033 9691
web: http://www.mpeltd.demon.co.uk - free VFX Forth downloads

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> An RTX2000 clone core is available from us in VHDL for FPGAs. A
> C compiler is also available. The CPU runs at 20 MIPs in a
> Xilinx Spartan. This is twice as fast as the original Harris
> (Intersil) part, with an interrupt latency of 200ns before
> starting useful work.

I just read the online RTX2010 manual.  Does the RTX2000 also
have the multiply-and-accumulate logic?

Do people buy these chips nowadays for DSP?

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"Davka" <m...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:<T%XXb.70$p...@news.uswest.net>...
> I want to bring my knowledge about Forth processors up to date, so I'm
> posting some questions.
> 
> Who is currently selling Forth processors?

Dr. Ting has a few thousand MuP21 and MuP21h VLSI chips that date
back to 94 and 95.  He was always charging about what they cost him to 
make but you might be able to get a deal on them now that they are
getting rather old.  He also still has some stock on RTX parts and
kits.

His latest projects include P8,P16,P24,P32,and P64.  He has a
nice development board with a P32 that uses about 75% of the FPGA
on the board so there is room for adding custom instructions or
custom I/O hardware to the design.  The board also has RAM and
FLASH, a color LCD interface and LCD and software for a PC for
development.  I believe that board is about $300 and has a 400Mhz
part. 

Patriot has various models of their chip ranging from 100 to 350Mhz
or so.  There is a family of tiny 4Mhz 4-bit bus 16-bit Forth chips
manufactured in Europe.  These and other Forth chips are listed on
my Forth chips page referenced in another post.

> What happened to forthchip.com?
> 
> Is there a community that is actively involved in discussing and/or
> developing FPGA-based Forth chips, or more generally, stack
> machines?

There are mailing lists but the hardware list has been silent for
a long time.  There are discussions sometimes in #forth or #FIGUK
chat rooms, even in c.l.f from time to time, but mostly people
talk about Forth software not hardware.
 
> Has anyone done any substantial DSP work in Forth?  Are there libraries
> of code available?
> How about hardware Forth implementations that include dedicated DSP
> hardware?

You might also consider that there are Forth systems that run on
DSP hardware.  These are not Forth chips per se but might meet your
needs.

The Harris RTX 2001 had the one cycle multiply-accumulator, many
FPGA can support the inclusion of single cycle multiply-accumulate
circuites.  Some can hold quite a lot of them as you probably know.
P32 does 32x32->64 and 64/32 but with multiply and divide steps.
But with larger FPGA specialized DSP circuits or coprocessors can
be added without too much trouble.

I can't say too much at this time about our current work in custom
VLSI Forth processors and they are not available for public sale
anyway.
  
Best Wishes

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