On 4/5/2011 7:46 PM, John Griessen wrote:
On 04/05/2011 09:04 AM, Patrick Doyle wrote:Hi Rick,The GA144 sounds quite interesting for a very specificapplication that may be coming down the pike pretty soon, but I don't have any good killer app ideas for it.On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 9:47 AM, rickman<gnuarm.geda@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:Does this sound interesting to you?I also have an interest in testing the Green Arrays GA144 multiprocessor. This device has 144 processors running at 666 MIPS each consuming less than a Watt with all running full bore. They are async processors and stop on a dime when waiting for input dropping power consumption to virtually nothingI'm on the GA144 interested list, but not a peep out of Greg Bailey since November when they were proposing bootstrapping by asking for preorders of 10 chips/$100.
I believe the $100 is just the deposit and the total price is $200 per 10 chips. I expect the production price will be much less, but I don't know for sure. They have prototyped a GA4 and a GA32 I believe. These will certainly cost much less.
They've been working with no income so far. I'm not in a position to gamble on seeing if colorforth/greenarray-forth runs on a linux box until they get flow...Many of C Moore's chip projects have stalled and never become a viable product. Hope this one does though. Heard anything since November? John Griessen
They have been updating the web page periodically. They currently have received some thousands of chips and are in the process of developing tests. From Chuck Moore's blog, "Here's GreenArrays' latest receipt of GA144 chips: 12 wafers; 14561 chips; 2,096,784 computers." I seem to recall that a wafer costs roughly $1000 to process and assuming close to 90% yield that would put the raw chip cost below $1 each for the GA144.
I have confidence that they will develop useful chips. My concerns have more to do with the business aspects. There are a couple of issues about the company, for example, they should have a pretty clear idea of target applications. I have read little about this. I would also expect more app notes and even the fact that they received chips but are not ready to test them concerns me. It all rather reminds me of Ross Perot's run for the presidency.
I hope I am wrong. I think these devices are unique in the computing world and may be the start of a new paradigm in embedded systems.
BTW, this is rather off topic here. Perhaps anyone who wishes to continue this discussion should take it up in the comp.lang.forth newsgroup?
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