Re: Structured Programming using Forth

rickman wrote:
They use external memory, but it is not so they can run a Forth VM. I
don't recall where it read it, but they use the high speed comms to
download snippettes of forth as required. Chuck has even written code
that does this in very few instructions and then runs the code that
loaded starting just after the loader, IIRC.

Jeff's most recent message confirms that at least some at Intellasys are indeed creating some form of virtual machines. I don't know if this was just an experiment or a model they might use in some application. For implementing complex communication protocols (like a TCP/IP stack), it might make sense.

I seem to recall that the initial application for the SeaForth chip
was home theater. That is something that requires more than 16 or 18
bits typically. I forget how wide the SeaForth word is, but typically
24 bits are used for HiFi audio. Is this chip 24 bit? If not, I
expect double precision math is being used.

Don't confuse the number of bits fed to a D/A converter with the number of bits needed needed for intermediate calculation. A home theatre system might (on the low end) only be using 16-bit D/A converters. But the various processing steps-- such as various matrix-audio decoding, mixing, filtering, and so on will usually require more bits.

And that potentially is a problem. Using a SEAforth processor as a DSP in even a consumer-level audio application would most certainly require multi-precision MACs, and that's going to start to cut into the processing speed of the system. So you might then use multiple processors in parallel, but then you have to deal with the communications between them.

Again, it's not Forth as usual.

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