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* [9fans] Inferno and the Parallella
@ 2014-02-04 21:43 Shane Morris
  2014-02-05  5:26 ` lucio
  2014-02-05  6:06 ` lucio
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 17+ messages in thread
From: Shane Morris @ 2014-02-04 21:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs

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Hello 9fans,

I saw references to the GreenArrays chip on list, and did some more
investigation:

http://www.parallella.org/board/

I thought this may be a worthy target of even a Styx-on-a-chip
implementation. I have contacted their forums, and one of their moderators
said it would be a good idea.

I have already made contact with a member of the community who is playing
with their SDK for a single core - making a "grid on a chip" after that
would be an easy exercise I imagine. I recommended to him that he make a
Styx-on-a-chip implementation first, with a payload program (basically, a
fast floating point algorithm decoding a stream from a SDR, so the grid
decodes multiple streams in parallel), and see if that flies.

Thoughts? Comments? Critique? Flames?

Thanks!

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* Re: [9fans] Inferno and the Parallella
  2014-02-04 21:43 [9fans] Inferno and the Parallella Shane Morris
@ 2014-02-05  5:26 ` lucio
  2014-02-05  5:40   ` Shane Morris
  2014-02-05  6:06 ` lucio
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 17+ messages in thread
From: lucio @ 2014-02-05  5:26 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

> Thoughts? Comments? Critique? Flames?

Sounds like fun.  I would suggest keeping (some of) us posted.  Maybe
the occasional posting on G+?

++L





^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread

* Re: [9fans] Inferno and the Parallella
  2014-02-05  5:26 ` lucio
@ 2014-02-05  5:40   ` Shane Morris
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 17+ messages in thread
From: Shane Morris @ 2014-02-05  5:40 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs

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I suppose, if you bug me enough, and I have some time up my sleeve (like
3:30am in the morning when I can't sleep) I'll try typing a coherent reply.
I don't G+, I hardly ever use their 3D printing group, which I think has
some great suff, I think its another duplicity of an already old concept.

Then again, talking about old concepts, sometimes, when I could be
bothered, I go on #plan9 on Freenode IRC - boris_G is me, again, bug me
enough, and I might respond. I go on there for #neo900, #hackrf, a few
others.

As a last suggestion, interested persons email me directly, put something
along the lines of "Parallella" in the title, and I'll make an impromptu
mailing list. I've contacted a couple of specific people already, and I'd
imagine they'd want to be informed.

I hope the Parallella people reopen their preorders soon-ish, website says
January, no change in status yet.

Thanks!


On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 4:26 PM, <lucio@proxima.alt.za> wrote:

> > Thoughts? Comments? Critique? Flames?
>
> Sounds like fun.  I would suggest keeping (some of) us posted.  Maybe
> the occasional posting on G+?
>
> ++L
>
>
>
>

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* Re: [9fans] Inferno and the Parallella
  2014-02-04 21:43 [9fans] Inferno and the Parallella Shane Morris
  2014-02-05  5:26 ` lucio
@ 2014-02-05  6:06 ` lucio
  2014-02-05  6:20   ` Shane Morris
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 17+ messages in thread
From: lucio @ 2014-02-05  6:06 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

> Thoughts? Comments? Critique? Flames?

I guess this is the real value of efforts like GSOC, if only they
could be extended to a much greater public either with an infinite
budget or by pushing a far more socially-aware ethos.

I'll refrain from pontificating further.

++L





^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread

* Re: [9fans] Inferno and the Parallella
  2014-02-05  6:06 ` lucio
@ 2014-02-05  6:20   ` Shane Morris
  2014-02-05  6:32     ` Henry Millican
  2014-02-05 12:46     ` erik quanstrom
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 17+ messages in thread
From: Shane Morris @ 2014-02-05  6:20 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs

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Oh, its ok. I like the GSoC idea. I just don't think I'm GSoC material, I'm
hardware type, even if I will be a uni student this year going forward -
"If it draws blood, its hardware" as the old maxim goes.

The Parallella board is US$99, a far more modest investment in hardware
than a GizmoBoard as I had previously suggested, and packs more power for
the price, in terms of coding value. Whether it could be accepted as a
coding project of the type for GSoC, a mentor for it found, and other
logistical concerns are a issue for the GSoC organisers, but I suppose,
could it happen?

An abstract topic for the time being.


On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 5:06 PM, <lucio@proxima.alt.za> wrote:

> > Thoughts? Comments? Critique? Flames?
>
> I guess this is the real value of efforts like GSOC, if only they
> could be extended to a much greater public either with an infinite
> budget or by pushing a far more socially-aware ethos.
>
> I'll refrain from pontificating further.
>
> ++L
>
>
>
>

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* Re: [9fans] Inferno and the Parallella
  2014-02-05  6:20   ` Shane Morris
@ 2014-02-05  6:32     ` Henry Millican
  2014-02-05  6:40       ` Shane Morris
  2014-02-05 12:46     ` erik quanstrom
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 17+ messages in thread
From: Henry Millican @ 2014-02-05  6:32 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs

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Parallella seems very cool. I'll probably pick one up when I have free
time.

I've worked with the Zynq chip on board, which is also great. For $99 it's
one hell of a dev board, considering you get an FPGA with hard ARM cores,
as well as the Ephiphany chip.

The Ephiphany processor fills in the gap between CPU and FPGA tasks in my
opinion. Things that would require complex state machines on an FPGA could
be done in parallel on the RISC cores very easily (and quickly). I can
imagine doing some image processing or something (that doesn't lend itself
well to FPGAs) of the like with this.

I'll be following you guys and may have time to contribute, but I am just a
hardware guy after all.
--

Henry


On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 10:20 PM, Shane Morris <edgecomberts@gmail.com>wrote:

> Oh, its ok. I like the GSoC idea. I just don't think I'm GSoC material,
> I'm hardware type, even if I will be a uni student this year going forward
> - "If it draws blood, its hardware" as the old maxim goes.
>
> The Parallella board is US$99, a far more modest investment in hardware
> than a GizmoBoard as I had previously suggested, and packs more power for
> the price, in terms of coding value. Whether it could be accepted as a
> coding project of the type for GSoC, a mentor for it found, and other
> logistical concerns are a issue for the GSoC organisers, but I suppose,
> could it happen?
>
> An abstract topic for the time being.
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 5:06 PM, <lucio@proxima.alt.za> wrote:
>
>> > Thoughts? Comments? Critique? Flames?
>>
>> I guess this is the real value of efforts like GSOC, if only they
>> could be extended to a much greater public either with an infinite
>> budget or by pushing a far more socially-aware ethos.
>>
>> I'll refrain from pontificating further.
>>
>> ++L
>>
>>
>>
>>
>

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* Re: [9fans] Inferno and the Parallella
  2014-02-05  6:32     ` Henry Millican
@ 2014-02-05  6:40       ` Shane Morris
  2014-02-05 10:57         ` Muhammad Junaid Muzammil
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 17+ messages in thread
From: Shane Morris @ 2014-02-05  6:40 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs

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Seems there is some interest in this chip, and the board. As you said
Henry, state machines would run very quickly in parallel - I had some wad
arguing that an FPGA is the only thing you need, but nothing beats a hard
core for hard tasks. Grid it up in parallel, times sixteen, and thats a
fair bit of processing power.

I have already sent a few people emails concerning this, independently of
the list, to garner their opinions. Out of four people, only one has
replied, I suppose, Australia is on the other side of the world to most of
you guys, time zones and all. But I'm going to make an open call - if a
GSoC mentor in parallelism could be found, willing to advise the project,
could this be a GSoC project?

I suppose I should tender the idea on the wiki, but I'd rather not. Never
played with wiki's, nor had the interest to try. Too busy designing robots.
Tried a TAFENSW Moodle once, that was bad enough.


On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 5:32 PM, Henry Millican <henry@tehserv.net> wrote:

> Parallella seems very cool. I'll probably pick one up when I have free
> time.
>
> I've worked with the Zynq chip on board, which is also great. For $99 it's
> one hell of a dev board, considering you get an FPGA with hard ARM cores,
> as well as the Ephiphany chip.
>
> The Ephiphany processor fills in the gap between CPU and FPGA tasks in my
> opinion. Things that would require complex state machines on an FPGA could
> be done in parallel on the RISC cores very easily (and quickly). I can
> imagine doing some image processing or something (that doesn't lend itself
> well to FPGAs) of the like with this.
>
> I'll be following you guys and may have time to contribute, but I am just
> a hardware guy after all.
> --
>
> Henry
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 10:20 PM, Shane Morris <edgecomberts@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Oh, its ok. I like the GSoC idea. I just don't think I'm GSoC material,
>> I'm hardware type, even if I will be a uni student this year going forward
>> - "If it draws blood, its hardware" as the old maxim goes.
>>
>> The Parallella board is US$99, a far more modest investment in hardware
>> than a GizmoBoard as I had previously suggested, and packs more power for
>> the price, in terms of coding value. Whether it could be accepted as a
>> coding project of the type for GSoC, a mentor for it found, and other
>> logistical concerns are a issue for the GSoC organisers, but I suppose,
>> could it happen?
>>
>> An abstract topic for the time being.
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 5:06 PM, <lucio@proxima.alt.za> wrote:
>>
>>> > Thoughts? Comments? Critique? Flames?
>>>
>>> I guess this is the real value of efforts like GSOC, if only they
>>> could be extended to a much greater public either with an infinite
>>> budget or by pushing a far more socially-aware ethos.
>>>
>>> I'll refrain from pontificating further.
>>>
>>> ++L
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>

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* Re: [9fans] Inferno and the Parallella
  2014-02-05  6:40       ` Shane Morris
@ 2014-02-05 10:57         ` Muhammad Junaid Muzammil
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 17+ messages in thread
From: Muhammad Junaid Muzammil @ 2014-02-05 10:57 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs

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Well!! I have no idea about the Styx implementation. But certainly this
parallela board seems an interesting target. Currently they are only
producing with 16 core epiphancy board and not 64 core ones. Definitely
hard cores will always be faster than the multi cores. The cost to these
faster FPGA design is the longer design time as compared to the multicore
counterpart. I think, the generic architecture of multi cores has always
been the key to this rapid developemnt.

Junaid

On Wednesday, February 5, 2014, Shane Morris <edgecomberts@gmail.com> wrote:

> Seems there is some interest in this chip, and the board. As you said
> Henry, state machines would run very quickly in parallel - I had some wad
> arguing that an FPGA is the only thing you need, but nothing beats a hard
> core for hard tasks. Grid it up in parallel, times sixteen, and thats a
> fair bit of processing power.
>
> I have already sent a few people emails concerning this, independently of
> the list, to garner their opinions. Out of four people, only one has
> replied, I suppose, Australia is on the other side of the world to most of
> you guys, time zones and all. But I'm going to make an open call - if a
> GSoC mentor in parallelism could be found, willing to advise the project,
> could this be a GSoC project?
>
> I suppose I should tender the idea on the wiki, but I'd rather not. Never
> played with wiki's, nor had the interest to try. Too busy designing robots.
> Tried a TAFENSW Moodle once, that was bad enough.
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 5:32 PM, Henry Millican <henry@tehserv.net<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','henry@tehserv.net');>
> > wrote:
>
>> Parallella seems very cool. I'll probably pick one up when I have free
>> time.
>>
>> I've worked with the Zynq chip on board, which is also great. For $99
>> it's one hell of a dev board, considering you get an FPGA with hard ARM
>> cores, as well as the Ephiphany chip.
>>
>> The Ephiphany processor fills in the gap between CPU and FPGA tasks in my
>> opinion. Things that would require complex state machines on an FPGA could
>> be done in parallel on the RISC cores very easily (and quickly). I can
>> imagine doing some image processing or something (that doesn't lend itself
>> well to FPGAs) of the like with this.
>>
>> I'll be following you guys and may have time to contribute, but I am just
>> a hardware guy after all.
>> --
>>
>> Henry
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 10:20 PM, Shane Morris <edgecomberts@gmail.com<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','edgecomberts@gmail.com');>
>> > wrote:
>>
>>> Oh, its ok. I like the GSoC idea. I just don't think I'm GSoC material,
>>> I'm hardware type, even if I will be a uni student this year going forward
>>> - "If it draws blood, its hardware" as the old maxim goes.
>>>
>>> The Parallella board is US$99, a far more modest investment in hardware
>>> than a GizmoBoard as I had previously suggested, and packs more power for
>>> the price, in terms of coding value. Whether it could be accepted as a
>>> coding project of the type for GSoC, a mentor for it found, and other
>>> logistical concerns are a issue for the GSoC organisers, but I suppose,
>>> could it happen?
>>>
>>> An abstract topic for the time being.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 5:06 PM, <lucio@proxima.alt.za<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','lucio@proxima.alt.za');>
>>> > wrote:
>>>
>>>> > Thoughts? Comments? Critique? Flames?
>>>>
>>>> I guess this is the real value of efforts like GSOC, if only they
>>>> could be extended to a much greater public either with an infinite
>>>> budget or by pushing a far more socially-aware ethos.
>>>>
>>>> I'll refrain from pontificating further.
>>>>
>>>> ++L
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>

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* Re: [9fans] Inferno and the Parallella
  2014-02-05  6:20   ` Shane Morris
  2014-02-05  6:32     ` Henry Millican
@ 2014-02-05 12:46     ` erik quanstrom
  2014-02-05 14:41       ` Shane Morris
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 17+ messages in thread
From: erik quanstrom @ 2014-02-05 12:46 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: edgecomberts, 9fans

> Oh, its ok. I like the GSoC idea. I just don't think I'm GSoC material, I'm
> hardware type, even if I will be a uni student this year going forward -
> "If it draws blood, its hardware" as the old maxim goes.

it's great to hear the enthusiam, but sadly, it seems over
ambitious.

to work with this heterogeneous co-processor with the usual tools,
and be any more interesting than a standard arm, i think at least
the following needs to be done
1.  bootstrap the arm processor get plan 9 running.
1a. program the fpga with adapteva's binary blob.
1b. drivers for a minmal set of devices.
2.  write a compiler/assembler/linker for the epiphany multicore;
populate /epi/include.  a emulator may need to be written.
3.  write the libmach hooks for the same
4.  write the asm for /sys/src/lib*/epi (or at least libc)
5.  decide what kind of operating framework the epi
should have, and write the appropriate glue.  it's not
clear to me that a standard kernel could work at all.
(what kind of coherence model is there?)

this can't be done by one gsoc student in a summer.
and there's the open ended question of how to use the
epi coprocessor.

a very bright, gifted, experienced, stubborn, and diligent
student might have some hope of accomplishing 1/1a or
a significant part of 2.  but that's a stretch.  3, 4 seem
to be properly sized for one student gsoc.  5 is unknown.

so, in order to have something usable at the end, one would
need 5 students, 5 mentors, someone to do 1b, and sort of a
scrum master to help coordinate.

i see several serious risks to this idea.
a.  what if we get less than 5 students, or mentors, or slots?
b.  sadly, not all students complete the summer.  how do we
recover if even one person drops out?
c.  do we have someone qualified to be scrum master for
10 people (5 students and 5 mentors)?  with enough time?
d.  5 is open ended.

this seems too big a leap, given the student success rate is
not yet 100%.

so if you're a student still excited about this project, reframing
the problem so that it stands alone (even if it's just bootstrapping
the arm chip) seems like the best option to me.

now i could be wrong or overly pessamistic, so i'd love to
hear other opinions.

- erik



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread

* Re: [9fans] Inferno and the Parallella
  2014-02-05 12:46     ` erik quanstrom
@ 2014-02-05 14:41       ` Shane Morris
  2014-02-05 14:47         ` erik quanstrom
  2014-02-05 18:03         ` Skip Tavakkolian
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 17+ messages in thread
From: Shane Morris @ 2014-02-05 14:41 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: erik quanstrom; +Cc: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs

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You mention the word "heterogeneous" but I think it should take this tack:

For what I'd like to do, I would require GNU Radio running on the host (ie,
ARM) CPU. GNU Radio isn't going to run under Plan 9 on an ARM target, as
much as I'd like. You also mention "to be (much) more interesting than a
standard ARM..." but in effect, it already is.

I could be barking up the wrong tree here, and I made a suggestion of
Styx-on-a-chip to ease development times, and also student commitment, it
will have to talk to Linux at the end of the day, lets start now?


On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 11:46 PM, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>wrote:

> > Oh, its ok. I like the GSoC idea. I just don't think I'm GSoC material,
> I'm
> > hardware type, even if I will be a uni student this year going forward -
> > "If it draws blood, its hardware" as the old maxim goes.
>
> it's great to hear the enthusiam, but sadly, it seems over
> ambitious.
>
> to work with this heterogeneous co-processor with the usual tools,
> and be any more interesting than a standard arm, i think at least
> the following needs to be done
> 1.  bootstrap the arm processor get plan 9 running.
> 1a. program the fpga with adapteva's binary blob.
> 1b. drivers for a minmal set of devices.
> 2.  write a compiler/assembler/linker for the epiphany multicore;
> populate /epi/include.  a emulator may need to be written.
> 3.  write the libmach hooks for the same
> 4.  write the asm for /sys/src/lib*/epi (or at least libc)
> 5.  decide what kind of operating framework the epi
> should have, and write the appropriate glue.  it's not
> clear to me that a standard kernel could work at all.
> (what kind of coherence model is there?)
>
> this can't be done by one gsoc student in a summer.
> and there's the open ended question of how to use the
> epi coprocessor.
>
> a very bright, gifted, experienced, stubborn, and diligent
> student might have some hope of accomplishing 1/1a or
> a significant part of 2.  but that's a stretch.  3, 4 seem
> to be properly sized for one student gsoc.  5 is unknown.
>
> so, in order to have something usable at the end, one would
> need 5 students, 5 mentors, someone to do 1b, and sort of a
> scrum master to help coordinate.
>
> i see several serious risks to this idea.
> a.  what if we get less than 5 students, or mentors, or slots?
> b.  sadly, not all students complete the summer.  how do we
> recover if even one person drops out?
> c.  do we have someone qualified to be scrum master for
> 10 people (5 students and 5 mentors)?  with enough time?
> d.  5 is open ended.
>
> this seems too big a leap, given the student success rate is
> not yet 100%.
>
> so if you're a student still excited about this project, reframing
> the problem so that it stands alone (even if it's just bootstrapping
> the arm chip) seems like the best option to me.
>
> now i could be wrong or overly pessamistic, so i'd love to
> hear other opinions.
>
> - erik
>

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* Re: [9fans] Inferno and the Parallella
  2014-02-05 14:41       ` Shane Morris
@ 2014-02-05 14:47         ` erik quanstrom
  2014-02-05 15:40           ` Anthony Sorace
  2014-02-05 18:03         ` Skip Tavakkolian
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 17+ messages in thread
From: erik quanstrom @ 2014-02-05 14:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: edgecomberts, quanstro, 9fans

On Wed Feb  5 09:41:04 EST 2014, edgecomberts@gmail.com wrote:

> You mention the word "heterogeneous" but I think it should take this tack:
>
> For what I'd like to do, I would require GNU Radio running on the host (ie,
> ARM) CPU. GNU Radio isn't going to run under Plan 9 on an ARM target, as
> much as I'd like. You also mention "to be (much) more interesting than a
> standard ARM..." but in effect, it already is.

why would it require gnu radio?

> I could be barking up the wrong tree here, and I made a suggestion of
> Styx-on-a-chip to ease development times, and also student commitment, it
> will have to talk to Linux at the end of the day, lets start now?

before one gets to some sort of communication mechanism, it's important
to understand what problem you want to solve.  could you tell us about that?

(this part is powerful enough to do proper 9p; there is no need for styx-on-a-chip
style solutions.)

- erik



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread

* Re: [9fans] Inferno and the Parallella
  2014-02-05 14:47         ` erik quanstrom
@ 2014-02-05 15:40           ` Anthony Sorace
  2014-02-05 15:59             ` Steven Stallion
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 17+ messages in thread
From: Anthony Sorace @ 2014-02-05 15:40 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs

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I mostly agree with Erik (I don't think it's *quite* as bad as presented, but
certainly in the ballpark, and it's worth erring in that direction).

In addition, one other thing to note about hardware projects in GSoC: you
have to make sure that the student, the mentor, and the backup mentor all
either have or have ready access to the part in question. For things folks are
likely to have or which can be picked up at a local shop, that's no big deal;
for "fringe" parts like this, with backorders, preorders, and/or supply
constraints, it's a significant hurdle. It's not impossible, but it's another
thing that has to be sorted out.

Any proposal for a hardware-based GSoC project will need to answer this
question ("I have 4 and will ship them at my cost...", "you can reliably buy
these at Radio Shack...", "Potential mentors Joe and Jane have said they
already have the part...", or similar).

[I expect to have a first draft of the wiki pages and application up tonight
or tomorrow morning; news as it happens.]


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* Re: [9fans] Inferno and the Parallella
  2014-02-05 15:40           ` Anthony Sorace
@ 2014-02-05 15:59             ` Steven Stallion
  2014-02-05 16:02               ` erik quanstrom
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 17+ messages in thread
From: Steven Stallion @ 2014-02-05 15:59 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs

On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 9:40 AM, Anthony Sorace <a@9srv.net> wrote:
> Any proposal for a hardware-based GSoC project will need to answer this
> question ("I have 4 and will ship them at my cost...", "you can reliably buy
> these at Radio Shack...", "Potential mentors Joe and Jane have said they
> already have the part...", or similar).

Don't forget: "I will not be upset if the student decides to keep my
hardware for one reason or another."



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread

* Re: [9fans] Inferno and the Parallella
  2014-02-05 15:59             ` Steven Stallion
@ 2014-02-05 16:02               ` erik quanstrom
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 17+ messages in thread
From: erik quanstrom @ 2014-02-05 16:02 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

On Wed Feb  5 11:00:42 EST 2014, sstallion@gmail.com wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 9:40 AM, Anthony Sorace <a@9srv.net> wrote:
> > Any proposal for a hardware-based GSoC project will need to answer this
> > question ("I have 4 and will ship them at my cost...", "you can reliably buy
> > these at Radio Shack...", "Potential mentors Joe and Jane have said they
> > already have the part...", or similar).
>
> Don't forget: "I will not be upset if the student decides to keep my
> hardware for one reason or another."

ha!

- erik



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread

* Re: [9fans] Inferno and the Parallella
  2014-02-05 14:41       ` Shane Morris
  2014-02-05 14:47         ` erik quanstrom
@ 2014-02-05 18:03         ` Skip Tavakkolian
  2014-02-05 19:32           ` Charles Forsyth
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 17+ messages in thread
From: Skip Tavakkolian @ 2014-02-05 18:03 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs

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this isn't exactly GNU Radio, but porting librtlsdr to Plan 9 would enable
interesting signal processing applications.  it would be doable as a GSoC
project since the majority of the work would involve switching from libusb
to Plan 9's usb (this was a project suggestion for 2013).

there are several useful apps that use rtlsdr, written in C and portable to
Plan 9 (AM/FM receiver, AIS, ADS-B, etc.). alternatively, Plan 9 nodes can
be a receiver network to feed GNU Radio running on another OS.



On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 6:41 AM, Shane Morris <edgecomberts@gmail.com> wrote:

> You mention the word "heterogeneous" but I think it should take this tack:
>
> For what I'd like to do, I would require GNU Radio running on the host
> (ie, ARM) CPU. GNU Radio isn't going to run under Plan 9 on an ARM target,
> as much as I'd like. You also mention "to be (much) more interesting than a
> standard ARM..." but in effect, it already is.
>
> I could be barking up the wrong tree here, and I made a suggestion of
> Styx-on-a-chip to ease development times, and also student commitment, it
> will have to talk to Linux at the end of the day, lets start now?
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 11:46 PM, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>wrote:
>
>> > Oh, its ok. I like the GSoC idea. I just don't think I'm GSoC material,
>> I'm
>> > hardware type, even if I will be a uni student this year going forward -
>> > "If it draws blood, its hardware" as the old maxim goes.
>>
>> it's great to hear the enthusiam, but sadly, it seems over
>> ambitious.
>>
>> to work with this heterogeneous co-processor with the usual tools,
>> and be any more interesting than a standard arm, i think at least
>> the following needs to be done
>> 1.  bootstrap the arm processor get plan 9 running.
>> 1a. program the fpga with adapteva's binary blob.
>> 1b. drivers for a minmal set of devices.
>> 2.  write a compiler/assembler/linker for the epiphany multicore;
>> populate /epi/include.  a emulator may need to be written.
>> 3.  write the libmach hooks for the same
>> 4.  write the asm for /sys/src/lib*/epi (or at least libc)
>> 5.  decide what kind of operating framework the epi
>> should have, and write the appropriate glue.  it's not
>> clear to me that a standard kernel could work at all.
>> (what kind of coherence model is there?)
>>
>> this can't be done by one gsoc student in a summer.
>> and there's the open ended question of how to use the
>> epi coprocessor.
>>
>> a very bright, gifted, experienced, stubborn, and diligent
>> student might have some hope of accomplishing 1/1a or
>> a significant part of 2.  but that's a stretch.  3, 4 seem
>> to be properly sized for one student gsoc.  5 is unknown.
>>
>> so, in order to have something usable at the end, one would
>> need 5 students, 5 mentors, someone to do 1b, and sort of a
>> scrum master to help coordinate.
>>
>> i see several serious risks to this idea.
>> a.  what if we get less than 5 students, or mentors, or slots?
>> b.  sadly, not all students complete the summer.  how do we
>> recover if even one person drops out?
>> c.  do we have someone qualified to be scrum master for
>> 10 people (5 students and 5 mentors)?  with enough time?
>> d.  5 is open ended.
>>
>> this seems too big a leap, given the student success rate is
>> not yet 100%.
>>
>> so if you're a student still excited about this project, reframing
>> the problem so that it stands alone (even if it's just bootstrapping
>> the arm chip) seems like the best option to me.
>>
>> now i could be wrong or overly pessamistic, so i'd love to
>> hear other opinions.
>>
>> - erik
>>
>
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread

* Re: [9fans] Inferno and the Parallella
  2014-02-05 18:03         ` Skip Tavakkolian
@ 2014-02-05 19:32           ` Charles Forsyth
  2014-02-05 20:13             ` Shane Morris
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 17+ messages in thread
From: Charles Forsyth @ 2014-02-05 19:32 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs

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On 5 February 2014 18:03, Skip Tavakkolian <skip.tavakkolian@gmail.com>wrote:

> this isn't exactly GNU Radio, but porting librtlsdr to Plan 9 would enable
> interesting signal processing applications.


I don't remember that from last time, but it seems a good project.

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread

* Re: [9fans] Inferno and the Parallella
  2014-02-05 19:32           ` Charles Forsyth
@ 2014-02-05 20:13             ` Shane Morris
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 17+ messages in thread
From: Shane Morris @ 2014-02-05 20:13 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs

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Thanks for the interesting debate.

I wish to, in the first instance, take an RTLSDR, sample 8MHz of RF
spectrum, use GNU radio to "fish out" any streams, pass those streams along
to the Epiphany chip, have the cores on the Epiphany chip decode the
streams, and return a result. Results are time sensitive, they must be
timestamped (syncfs?). Thats probably the most simple way of explaining
what I need done.

Erik said the chip is "powerful enough" to do full 9P, and he is probably
right. I thought Styx on a chip, with a payload program of the stream
decoder, might be easier to implement. These are only suggestions - I could
be barking up the wrong tree.

Charles - I sent you an email with further details.


On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 6:32 AM, Charles Forsyth
<charles.forsyth@gmail.com>wrote:

>
> On 5 February 2014 18:03, Skip Tavakkolian <skip.tavakkolian@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> this isn't exactly GNU Radio, but porting librtlsdr to Plan 9 would
>> enable interesting signal processing applications.
>
>
> I don't remember that from last time, but it seems a good project.
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2014-02-05 20:13 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 17+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2014-02-04 21:43 [9fans] Inferno and the Parallella Shane Morris
2014-02-05  5:26 ` lucio
2014-02-05  5:40   ` Shane Morris
2014-02-05  6:06 ` lucio
2014-02-05  6:20   ` Shane Morris
2014-02-05  6:32     ` Henry Millican
2014-02-05  6:40       ` Shane Morris
2014-02-05 10:57         ` Muhammad Junaid Muzammil
2014-02-05 12:46     ` erik quanstrom
2014-02-05 14:41       ` Shane Morris
2014-02-05 14:47         ` erik quanstrom
2014-02-05 15:40           ` Anthony Sorace
2014-02-05 15:59             ` Steven Stallion
2014-02-05 16:02               ` erik quanstrom
2014-02-05 18:03         ` Skip Tavakkolian
2014-02-05 19:32           ` Charles Forsyth
2014-02-05 20:13             ` Shane Morris

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