water cooler :: serial/parallel/usb control of appliances

Quote (mikshaw @ Feb. 03 2008,20:50)

I've been googling for sites that might be able to help me understand what is needed to create interfaces to appliances that can be controlled from a personal computer, but so far have come up with little results.

Check out Chuck More's seaForth-24 processor - 24 processors running at 1 Ghz each and drawing less than one watt total. A mini-super computer on a chip.

Now, here's a platform to port *nix to!

"SEAforth-24 Chip Profile

"Combining a 6x4 array of 18-bit processors with a powerful set of I/O functions, the SEAforth-24 chip deploys an innovative dual-stack architecture that is both asynchronous and scalable. Capable of driving an antenna directly, the SEAforth-24 wireless solution eliminates the need for any external data converters. The numerous on-chip benefits include:

"* RAM and ROM on each core (512 words each) to break the memory bottleneck
* Flash memory interface to ripple-load application code into cores at boot
* Static/dynamic RAM interface to facilitate common data memory access
* Real-time clock support in each core
* 18-bit A/D and 9-bit D/A to eliminate need for external data conversion
* Eleven Serial (SPI) ports, which can double as I2C, I2S, and USB ports
* 32 Parallel I/O lines with handshaking for versatile "bit banging"
* Scalable connectivity among multiple SEAforth-24 chips via high-speed I/O ports"

Also:

"# Forthlet Code objects that can be stored in one core but executed on others
# Automatic "sleep mode" to save processor power while waiting to send/receive
# RAM capacity for 2048 instructions; packing four instructions per 18-bit word
# BIOS-facilitated message routing to assure efficient event coordination"

From: http://www.intellasys.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=44&Itemid=55

/me wants the Sun OpenNiagara T2: 8 cores each with 8 threads running at 1.6Ghz, aka 64 logical processors. And it's Sparc, so linux will run on it already..

Quote (curaga @ Mar. 02 2008,09:01)

/me wants the Sun OpenNiagara T2: 8 cores each with 8 threads running at 1.6Ghz, aka 64 logical processors. And it's Sparc, so linux will run on it already..

That would be cool also.

_Anything_ beyond Wintel would be cool!

But, back to the main thread: The original poster wants to

Quote (mikshaw @ Feb. 03 2008,20:50)

create interfaces to appliances

which is exactly what FORTH was developed to do. See: "The FORTH program for spectral line observing" by Moore and Rather.

original here.