Anton Ertl wrote:
> "Jeff M." <massung@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:
>>> Yes, but the issue raised by Jeff M.'s post was whether there was
>>> reason to be concerned that there was no Forth programming model that
>>> would be workable for massively superparallel computing.
>
> I believe that's more a matter of opportunity rather than a basic
> problem. I.e., one could add extensions appropriate for such systems
> just as one they have been added to Fortran or C, it just has not been
> done. The reason is probably that most Forth programmers work at the
> other end of the computing spectrum (from small embedded systems to
> PCs). And of course there's the usual feedback at work (there's no
> Forth for supercomputers, so nobody programs supercomputers in Forth).
>
> However, I don't think that this is a reason for concern, because
> supercomputers are a pretty specialized niche, and excelling there
> does not tend to help in other areas.
I thought, from one of the Rochester papers, that Forth had a small niche
in the boot-up of an MPP somewhere. Of course, the paper was quite a few
years ago so the situation may well have changed enourmously since the
early days of MPP's.
> However, because the SPUs have limited local memory (256K), Forth
> would have an advantage there. However, as mentioned, I think any
> success on that model will be short-lived, because it cannot be
> transferred to future hardware.
That may all depend on ones approach and how the original implementation
was done. There is no logical reason why it should not be transferable
at some level slightly above metal.
>>I seriously cannot
>>picture myself solving the kind of problems I'm solving daily (in
>>regards to job scheduling, timing memory accesses, ...) in Forth just
>>as I can't picture myself writing embedded code in Pascal. But,
>>perhaps that's because I've just never tried.
>
> Probably.
Having spent some time looking at the prospects of using one of the
Intellasys chips I think that the multi-core approach to running
multiple autonomous threads is interesting enough and worthy of deeper
investigation. I can picture one type of product that could be made
easier with these chips. There are bound to be many more.
--
********************************************************************
Paul E. Bennett...............<email://Paul_E.Bennett@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
Forth based HIDECS Consultancy
Mob: +44 (0)7811-639972
Tel: +44 (0)1235-811095
Going Forth Safely ..... EBA. www.electric-boat-association.org.uk..
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