Re: [fonc] Electrical Actors?
On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 3:23 PM, Casey Ransberger wrote: > > Has anyone taken the actor model down to the metal? > This would be difficult. We are constrained by fixed memory resources and connectivity relationships at the hardware level. The memory limits constrain scheduling in ways that may conflict with progress in the Actors model. The limited hardware connectivity means we cannot arbitrarily share references as first-class between actors. > Another thought I had was using some nice symmetry that would let the > processor do more than one thing at once. Of course if I shipped a > microprocessor that had weird deadlock issues, I'd be inclined to call it a > lemon. If you are not fixated on actors, I suggest you pursue other concurrency models: synchronous dataflow (Lustre, Estrel), Kahn process networks, clockless logic (e.g. Karl Font), event calculus, FRP, RDP, et cetera. ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Electrical Actors?
On 6/6/2011 11:53 AM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote: Casey, Has anyone taken the actor model down to the metal? I studied this in detail back in 1990 and had several references. These are physically hard for me to reach right now and probably are not easy to find on the web. Though not an actor model, you might find my "RNA" idea of objects and messages at the transistor level interesting: http://www.merlintec.com:8080/hardware/19 This text is mostly just a note to myself and probably doesn't make much sense to other people. An animation of the idea, however, would probably be easily understood even by children (and probably more easily by biologists than computer "scientists", hence the forced acronym from Ring Network Architecture). I plan to work on this next year. hmm, computer scientists can be scientists. they just need a lab coat, some dark goggles, and to randomly interject "Science!" and "for Science!" into random/unrelated conversations. and maybe somehow make a modern computer store data on a near by reel-to-real tape, or build robots or something. programmers already use testing and similar though (like making tests and testing things). ok, yes, this was sort of a lame joke... or such... ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Electrical Actors?
Casey, > Has anyone taken the actor model down to the metal? I studied this in detail back in 1990 and had several references. These are physically hard for me to reach right now and probably are not easy to find on the web. Though not an actor model, you might find my "RNA" idea of objects and messages at the transistor level interesting: http://www.merlintec.com:8080/hardware/19 This text is mostly just a note to myself and probably doesn't make much sense to other people. An animation of the idea, however, would probably be easily understood even by children (and probably more easily by biologists than computer "scientists", hence the forced acronym from Ring Network Architecture). I plan to work on this next year. -- Jecel ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
[fonc] Electrical Actors?
So I'm stumbling along happily playing with various ideas to do with minimal microprocessor design (thanks for all of the wonderful pointers everyone) and invariably my mind wanders from time to time to what I'd need to do to make it fast. I could try representing netlists as s-exprs and letting natures own search engine look for faster variations of my design, but I worry that I might end up with something nightmarishly complex at the end of that slog. Another thought I had was using some nice symmetry that would let the processor do more than one thing at once. Of course if I shipped a microprocessor that had weird deadlock issues, I'd be inclined to call it a lemon. I know processors are usually concurrent in one way or another nowadays (and I recognize my own naïveté wrt the field, so please forgive) and I was wondering: Has anyone taken the actor model down to the metal? ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
