Posted by a1k0n 3 days ago
The HAKMEM sine/cosine generator is such an elegant choice - it's numerically stable in fixed-point and requires only adds and bit-shifts. Perfect for hardware. I used a similar approach once for generating test patterns in an FPGA.
The fact that you can iterate on this in simulation, then deploy to actual silicon via Tiny Tapeout for $150 is honestly mind-blowing. We're living in the future.
CORDIC: - Iterative algorithm (needs multiple clock cycles) - Accuracy improves with more iterations - Generates both magnitude and phase - Typical hardware implementation: 12-16 iterations for decent precision
HAKMEM (Item 149): - Single-cycle computation (just two adds per step) - Uses the recurrence: x' = x - εy, y' = y + εx - Accuracy depends on word width and epsilon choice - Numerically stable in exact arithmetic if ε² < 2
It's really cool but it doesn't seem practical at all. They aren't setting up print runs, just one-offs (https://tinytapeout.com/faq/#how-many-chips-will-i-receive-c...) and $150 could get you... many orders of magnitude more power than that.
... For that matter, apparently the microcontroller in the dev kit is a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP2040 , which seems like a beast in comparison. And it's still available for less than $1 USD on PiShop.
Remind me to participate in the next one!
For example, I've taken code optimized for Xilinx, ran it for another vendor, and resource count ballooned because stuff that was built-in/free on one wasn't on the other. It's a lot of work to truly make generic code and usually just means switching out modules per vendor.
Having everybody connected leads to homogenization of culture in some ways
The internet may hypothetically homogenize culture relative to a society that does not have any kind of mass communication at all, but relative to the world it was actually introduced into, the internet has completely balkanised the culture. Prior to the internet, we had television, cinema, literature, radio, and newspapers, which were all centralised and controlled enough that they created a shared monoculture in nations. A signifant portion of a country's population would watch, read, and listen to the same media. The internet bucked that trend, allowing all kinds of new subcultures to pop up and to more easily cross national boundaries.Software takes 1 year under someone smart in a production environment.
People that conflate the two... longer or more likely never.. =3
That's very funny.
During a career role most have no idea "why" chips were designed and built a certain way, nor require this information to work within abstract domains.
In many ways, vibe-coders are the absurd optimization of a naive trajectory toward zero workmanship standards. =3
> 1024x32 Commercial SRAM > CF_SRAM_1024x32 > Commercial SRAM: 1024 words x > 32 bits (4KB) with Wishbone Bus interface > Area: 0.17mm² > GPIOs: 0 > License: Commercial - $2500 per project
The project has a narrow scope of use-cases. =3
Analog i/o pins: definitely limited, even if you purchase the highest option available (6).
There are many bad things about LLMs, but a benign shift in popular language usage isn't one of them.
Organic shifts in language are fine. What is not fine is Big Money (which most forms of AI are) manipulating society at large - and that's not just the AI companies' doing. Think of Tiktok leading people to say "unalive" instead of the various clear words before (e.g. kill, murder, executed, run over by car, mauled to death by animal).
Culture contaminates.
but without the craft of a good advertising slogan. So worse!
x=CPU y=Memory Z=4k gates