144 Complete Computers on a Chip for $20

By Jon Titus | October 21, 2011

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The people at SchmartBoard sent me a sample of a prototype board (202-0048-001) that accommodates a new multicomputer integrated circuit (GA144) from GreenArrays that provides 144 computers. Yes, complete computers. The sample included one of the GA144 chips, which inspired me to do some editorial research. (www.schmartboard.com)

A single GA144 chip comprises 144 F18A computers, or nodes, positioned in an 8-by-18 array. Each computer connects to its adjacent horizontal and vertical neighbor. Thus, a computer within the array has four node-to-node communication paths, while those along the edges have three, and corner computers have two. The computer nodes have no diagonal communications, but you can transfer data to computers on a diagonal through horizontal and vertical neighbors; up-one and over-one, and so on. The 48 nodes on the outside edges provide a variety of analog and digital I/O options for communications with external devices. For more information, manuals, and data sheets, visit: www.greenarraychips.com.

So, how can a company fit 144 complete computers on a chip that measures 1-by-1-cm? It keeps the computer architecture simple, the RAM and ROM small (64 bytes each) and it uses 18-bit instructions. Each node provides its own return stack, data stack, registers, and arithmetic-logic unit (ALU). Handshaking between computers requires no code and takes little time, and because the computers do not use a clock of any kind, they consume power only when they perform an operation. When not doing so, their energy use amounts only to small leakage currents.

Instead of thinking of an F18A computer as a zillion-transistor processor, look at it as a digital node that efficiently and quickly runs microcode from a small amount of memory.   A GreenArrays application note shows the use of 13 F18A nodes to run the MD5 cryptographic algorithm that calculates a one-way hash function of 128 bits on an arbitrarily long sequence of 8-bit values. The app note illustrates the use of machine code, but I doubt engineers will write programs at this level.

Instead, they will use higher-level programming modes. The GreenArrays architecture information notes, "...our architecture supports at least two higher levels of programming: Code streaming and interpretation of any high-level language from an external memory. We supply eFORTH, as an example of the latter. By adding a small [external] SRAM device and committing a handful of nodes to running an interpreter, things like TCP/IP can be supported at a very respectable ratio of performance to both cost and energy consumption."

OK, but what the heck is eFORTH? It's a simple and portable implementation of ANS Forth that runs on a 16-bit virtual machine created for it on one of the GreenArrays chips supplied on the company's GA144-1.20 Evaluation Boards ($US 450). You can run eFORTH via a terminal-emulator program on a PC connected to the board with a USB cable.

For now, though, arrayForth is the main tool for working with F18 code, and it provides 33 instructions described at: http://www.colorforth.com/inst.htm. (colorFORTH uses color to replace punctuation and indicate semantics.) I have not used the FORTH language and was mystified when I tried to interpret this phrase "dup  -1 .  +  and" that will return a zero if T was a power of 2.  Forth uses a stack and T represents the value on the top of the stack. Think of reverse-Polish math and you get a better idea of what's involved--lots of pushing and popping to and from the stack.

Greg Bailey, president of GreenArrays kindly led me through the interpretation of the phrase "dup  -1 .  +  and" that includes five "words," or what you might think of as commands in other languages. It takes time to get used to having a stack for storage, a small amount of memory, and an ALU that operates continuously; remember, no clocks. By the way, Bailey chaired the technical subcommittee of the X3J14 group that wrote the ANS Forth standard.

People already familiar with Forth can jump right in. Perhaps the possibility of harnessing 144 computers on one chip will overcome what some might see as a barrier created by the FORTH language. But like anything, you have to put your mind to it and figure ascending the learning curve is worth the effort. --Jon Titus

p.s. If you'd like Bailey's explanation of how the "dup  -1 .  +  and" phrase operates, send me a message and I post it in a comment or as another blog entry.

Additional reference:

Forth Interest Group: http://www.forth.org/.

Jon, The memory for each

By Anonymous October 30, 2011 - 11:46am

Jon, The memory for each processor seems small, at first glance. However, note that there can be as many as four instructions per word.

Checkout all the routines they have jammed into the ROM of each processor. The routines are described in the ga144 chip reference, and include some interesting functions available to be called from the application code.

Jon, The memory for each

By Anonymous November 5, 2011 - 4:58pm

Jon, The memory for each processor is 64 18-bit words, not 64 bytes, of RAM and ROM.

WHere to buy?

By toddkrein November 7, 2011 - 6:57pm

Can't seem to find that dev board on the Schmartboard website...

Bailey's explanation, please

By Douglas Datwyler November 7, 2011 - 11:30pm

I grew up on the RPN of HP calculators, but this statement leaves me befuddled. I'd like Bailey's explanation of how the "dup -1 . + and" phrase operates

An old timer's trick

By Old Timer November 8, 2011 - 12:51am

The word "dup" makes a copy of the input value.

The phrase "-1 . +" decrements the top copy by 1.

Now stop and consider what happens to the bits when you increment a binary number. Due to ripple carry, any contiguous low order 1 bits are turned off until the carry comes to rest and sets the previously lowest order 0 bit to a 1. For decrement the opposite happens. Any contiguous low order 0 bits are turned on until the previously lowest order 1 bit is found and cleared.

If you "and" this with the original value only higher order 1 bits will remain, and only if they existed to begin with. If you started out with only a single or no 1 bits, the result will be all zero. If you had more than a single 1 bit you will have cleared only the lowest of them and the remainder is non-zero.

Positive even powers of two, as binary numbers, have only a single 1 bit so this algorithm will detect them by producing a zero output value.

It really is amazing to

By Fred December 6, 2011 - 8:31pm

It really is amazing to consider the 144 computers on a 1x1cm! Is this some sort of record, and what impact does such a feat have on the future of MCUs?

I think that MCUs capabilities for transferring and holding data along with other storage options such as using the cloud on a dedicated server give users a lot of versatile options. In fact they can even work in conjunction with one another. I look forward to learning more about the architecture of this particular chip, and how the computers work together.

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