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by claudio_mos 83 days ago
> The first question has to be: why?

There are many reasons. The main one is that no architecture exists that models such a complex ternary processor. At most, there are "on paper" implementations of much less complex architectures; no one has addressed the problem at this level. Having a complete architecture and its hardware implementation now allows us to start developing software on something other than an emulator.

> ---- I don't see any rationale or explanation of the thinking. Is it purely an exercise? Exploration? Is there some algorithm space in which it has an advantage over binary? > -----

No, it's a processor that's available now, both the current hardware implementation (on FPGA) and the Verilog/VHDL description for implementation on other architectures (ASIC?), as well as the specifications made available under license.

>---- Is there a compiler? >----

Hmm, but I mentioned it in the paper; currently, a working cross-assembler (obviously) and a high-level language based on Rust are being designed/built.

>---- How does it compare on Dhrystone or Coremark per LUT compared to a RISC-V core of similar size on the same FPGA? >----

This is an interesting question; the answer is: currently, no. We intend to provide (soon) comparative tests of this type.