[chuck-dev] Intro + question

[Ge Wang]

Hi Bert!

> The 6711 is a floating point DSP if I recall correctly?

yes - it is floating point.

>
>> it is very horrendous, but promising.  What do you think?
>
> The project looks quite interesting. It's very cool you already did a
> port to the 6713. I'm particularly interested in getting it to run on
> one of the most minimal DSPs of TI, the 2407. 16-bit fixed point and 
> 32K
> flash, 2K ram. I don't want to use any extra memory, it should run on
> the DSP alone. Can you advise me in a little more detail how I could do
> a translator or interpreter for the Chuck code? I suppose I can remove
> all audio I/O specific code and I would have to re-do the
> timing/synchronization parts. Anything I'm missing?

here is what we figure so far:

- timing/concurrency is actually not hard - you only have to provide
   the right code stubs to do those.
- if you are running on 2407, you will have to either implement a
   good chuck to c generator, or emit the chuck program directly into
   the DSP's IS.  the former sounds less painful and with a good
   cross compiler, could yield good results.
- what type of things are you thinking of doing with the chip/chuck?
   the audio or another real-time clock must be accessible in order to
   have timing - otherwise there is synchronization but the timing is
   clocked by any physical clock.  this may also be acceptable for stuff.
- as for the translator
   - normal operations pretty much stay the same
     no emulation, so 1+x => y;  would become y = 1+x;
   - timing/synchronization would take place by calling a special
     function/API for managing shreds.  there are few details,
     such as how to resume execution on an abitrary shred.  6711
     has a start, but would need to be greatly changed for native
     executables.  it might be easier to manually roll a few lines of
     assembly for context switching between shreds.

Interesting - porting a shredded, timed vm to embedded chips.
a lot of cool places for optimization and new ideas, and much
potential for exciting disaster.  ha.  very cool.  Let's keep this
discuss going?

Best,
Ge!