[Coco] Coco Digest, Vol 87, Issue 8

[Steven Hirsch]

On Tue, 6 Jul 2010, Mark Marlette wrote:

>
> As I am no VHDL engineer, I have dabbled in it.
>
> At one point I had a version of Gary's code. As one might appreciate his 
> .pof or .sof file, when you look at the source you WILL appreciate it. 
> Holy Hanna!
>
> This is not for the faint heart and it is an advanced project, IMHO.

No doubt of that.  But, the only way to learn is to try.

> There will be a lot of how the heck do you get that from this. :) As 
> some of this is looking at someone else's code, it is complex.

I've had a modicum of training in computer architecture, digital design 
and synthesis, but most of it was years ago when I went back for my 
(belated) CS degree and minored in EE.  Those creaks you hear are my brain 
muscles...  Nice thing is that I work elbow to elbow with folks who live 
and breathe this stuff.

> Another minor point, you better have a pretty good computer. My laptop 
> compiled it in ~20 minutes and it is pretty snappy, engineering work 
> assigned unit. The desktop took 1/2 hr to compile, it was a Dell P4, 
> 3.2GHZ w/1GB of DRAM.

Home box is a 2.4GHz Core2 Quad with 8GB of memory.  We'll have to see how 
painful it turns out to be.

> Hats off to Gary and John K., Mark M. also has some cool stuff at Pace.

Hats off to all the hardware gurus.  As they say "..oh, you have a CS 
degree?  That's nice, just don't touch anything.".

Steve


p.s. - What's 'Pace'?


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