fentonc

8 ms·

1.
by fentonc 11mo ago
I built a whimsical LLM-driven robot to provide running commentary for my yard: https://www.chrisfenton.com/meet-grasso-the-yard-robot/
2.
by fentonc 11mo ago
I was an architect on the Anton 2 and 3 machines - the systolic arrays that computed pairwise interactions were a significant component of the chips, but there were also an enormous number of fairly normal looking general-purpose (32-bit &#
3.
by fentonc 1y ago
I love stuff like this! I have a Kaypro 2/84, which supports a display resolution of 160x100 with colors ranging from green, to 'less green' to black, and I went down a rabbit hole of trying to push the graphics: https:&#x2F
4.
by fentonc 1y ago
I built a more whimsical version of this - my daughter and I basically built a 'junk robot' from a 1980s movie, told it 'you're an independent and free junk robot living in a yard', and let it go: https:/&#x2F
5.
by fentonc 1y ago
Awesome project! I built a somewhat similar 30-pixel display: https://www.chrisfenton.com/the-pixelweaver/ Mine was entirely mechanical (driven by punch cards and a hand-crank), and changed all of the pixels in paralle
6.
by fentonc 1y ago
I think a quad-CPU X-MP is probably the first computer that could have run (not train!) a reasonably impressive LLM if you could magically transport one back in time. It supported a 4GB (512 MWord) SRAM-based "Solid State Drive" w
7.
by fentonc 1y ago
The Cray PVP line was also doing double precision floating point, and could overlap vector memory operations with math operations. My guess is that you would need a microcontroller operating at several hundred MHz to beat a Cray-1 in practi
8.
by fentonc 1y ago
Fun article! I was one of the architects on Anton 2 and Anton 3 at DESRES.
9.
by fentonc 2y ago
This is awesome! I recovered the only copy of COS ( http://www.chrisfenton.com/cos-recovery/ ), but we never really had a way to use it.
10.
by fentonc 2y ago
I took a different approach by just making an FPGA-based multi-core Z80 setup. One core is dedicated to running 'supervisor' CP/NET server, and all of the applications run on CP/NET clients and can run normal CP/M s
11.
by fentonc 2y ago
That's awesome sounding - I love how creative people got with mechanical designs before everything went digital.
12.
by fentonc 2y ago
This was one of my rare projects that was as fun to use as it was to build!
13.
by fentonc 2y ago
I spend all day writing C++ or Python, and like playing around with Turbo Pascal on a circa-1984 Kaypro 2 as a hobby machine - the projects are certainly smaller, but my edit-compile-run loop on my Kaypro is usually faster in practice (even
14.
by fentonc 2y ago
FPGAs are particularly amazing for this sort of project where you would otherwise need a custom ASIC that could never be even remotely economical to build (see my 16-core Z80 laptop as another excellent example: http://www.chrisf
15.
by fentonc 2y ago
I am now adding "Silicon Carver" to my resume.
16.
by fentonc 2y ago
It updates in pretty close to realtime (ie the simulator timestep is extremely close to the actual wall clock time required to compute the next timestep), so “animation” isn’t really the right word. If you let it go for a few hours it leave
17.
by fentonc 2y ago
I'm definitely packing this with me if I ever time travel.
18.
by fentonc 2y ago
It's . . . not great.
19.
by fentonc 2y ago
Author here! Most of my projects are kind of like this penny arcade comic ( https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/06/13/the-hippothala... ) - I saw where something was not, and said "No. This will n
20.
by fentonc 3y ago
I came pretty close: http://www.chrisfenton.com/the-turbo-entabulator/
21.
by fentonc 3y ago
But mine was only 1/10-scale! You're correct this isn't really a Cray other than the vaguely rounded shape, but it is still adorable and looks super fun to program.
22.
by fentonc 3y ago
I built this! It's amazing! It's a 16-core Z80 running at 140 MHz: http://www.chrisfenton.com/the-zedripper-part-1/
23.
by fentonc 4y ago
Many CPU/SoC systems could be made vastly simpler while maintaining binary compatibility if you're willing to sacrifice performance/area. Anything that's not visible from the ISA level can be implemented however one want
24.
by fentonc 4y ago
Neat - I had never heard of ACE. In my (fairly limited) experience it works fine, although running the cores at 140 MHz (and the network) forgives a lot of sins. I actually wrote my CP/NET server as a regular CP/M application in T
25.
by fentonc 4y ago
I still play around with Turbo Pascal on CP/M a lot for fun - it is a shockingly good development environment (even on a 4 MHz CPU my edit/compile/debug loop is usually <10 seconds, which is pretty fast even by modern stan
26.
by fentonc 4y ago
I built a 16-core Z80 laptop running CP/NOS (the networked version of CP/M 2.2) - it's surprisingly great and useable: http://www.chrisfenton.com/the-zedripper-part-1/ It's like a windowed, multi-ta
27.
by fentonc 4y ago
We design custom silicon for doing molecular dynamics simulations for drug-discovery work: https://www.deshawresearch.com/technology.html
28.
by fentonc 4y ago
Lol - I built a standalone version of this for my 4yo (at her request). It has a temperature sensor and a bunch of LEDs that light up next to little pictures of outfits to tell her what she’s allowed to wear.
29.
by fentonc 5y ago
I believe his plans did include a general shift function - what he referred to as “stepping” up/down was just shifting by a digit
30.
by fentonc 5y ago
I've been very interested in mechanical computing for a while (even going so far as to build my own simple 3D-printed, hand-cranked computer!), but the whole analytical engine thing makes me wonder what might have happened if computing

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