[LMH]FPGA / microcode

[Eric Blossom]

On Fri, Mar 05, 2004 at 07:56:33PM +0000, Robert Swindells wrote:
> Eric Blossom wrote:
>>
> 
> The attraction of a LispM over a Lisp system on stock hardware is
> the integrated environment.

Perhaps I'm missing something?  What's stopping us from having an
integrated environment on stock hardware?  I see that we could have
lisp code that directly addresses the frame buffer, or for that
matter, lisp code that directly manipulates the page table entries on
stock hardware.  For that matter, why not just compile the LispM lisp
source to AMD64 native instructions?

> It is a lot easier to migrate to a larger address space when you
> have a running system.

Sure.  

> >Perhaps the way to go would be do define
> >yet-another-lisp-virtual-machine, or figure out what symbolics used (or
> >just use Common Lisp with lots of declarations!) and target the AMD64
> >architecture.  It's got twice as many registers as the x86, lots of
> >address space, they keep getting faster and cheaper all the time, and
> >you can order one today, and have it delivered tomorrow.
> 
> Rather than define another one, why not follow KMP's suggestion and
> make a business proposal to new Symbolics.
> 
> Someone, or a small group, could offer to port the VLM to AMD64 in
> exchange for X number of licences to use the finished product.

Not a bad idea, but it leaves us in the same mess we're in now: 
No free software / open source lisp machine.

I suggest that we learn from the examples of the past, but start new,
with free software all the way to the bottom.  We've got good free
compilers already.  There's McCLIM for the display.  There are a
couple of emacs-ish editors in CL.  We may not actually be that far
away.


Eric