Re: [TUHS] A New History of Modern Computing - my thoughts

[Bakul Shah <bakul@iitbombay.org>]

On Nov 28, 2021, at 5:12 PM, Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> 
> On Sun, Nov 28, 2021 at 07:19:08PM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> 
>> 64 bit PDP-11
> 
> That would be pretty cool.  Your comments about minimalist approaches ring
> really true for me.  The last conversation I had with Greg Chesson was
> a 2 hour rant from him about the fact that nobody who is doing anything
> these days understands the value of a minimalist approach, it's one
> complex framework or whatever after another.  

Indeed.

As far as processor design is concerned, I believe one of the
problems is that there are fewer and fewer people who can do
both h/w and s/w design competently. This is why I think more
programmers should roll up their sleeves and design a
processor and understand the issues involved, especially now
that programming FPGAs is becoming common.  May be start with
an existing RISC-V core in some HDL, and push and pull it
into (what you think is) an ideal minimalist design. Even
adding a codegen target for such a processor (to at least tcc
or Ken's C compiler) won't be all that hard. I believe this
sort of co-design is what is needed to move past the current
designs. It will likely be some young whippersnapper who
doesn't know what is impossible, rather than one of us
greybeards!