New Chip

heh..

it's been more than a month since my last post... blame it on the world cup..
how could it have gone to the italians!! they played horribly!! bah... but
that's over now.. never realised i liked football this much.. even went to
wetherspoons to watch the semi-finals with some friends..

as for my phd topic, it was decided a couple of weeks ago after being narrowed
down to two topics.. it will be an interesting topic and i have no doubt that
it will be fun doing it.. it will also be another processor design.. however,
i'm not saying anything more about it except that it might possibly feature
an MISD processor.. interesting ain't it.. really interesting.. i'm working
on the justification for such a processor and how it would possibly look like
at the moment.. hopefully, i'll get it done soon.. i plan to start working on
the processor by august.. i'll be approaching my new topic in a european
way.. i will keep writing papers on my progress... and finally compile the
papers into the final thesis write-up.. i'll write the papers with the
intention on publishing them.. however, i won't focus on the papers too much
unless they're actually accepted..

as for the ae68, the architecture has been finalised.. we're currently in the
process of finalising the board components.. Peter will be designing the
board and ordering the parts soon.. i hope that i can actually deliver on the
chip.. the only part that's been bothering me with the ae68 has been the
decoder.. it's wicked!! however, it's too complicated for me to simulate its
performance in my mind.. i'm going to have to actually build it to decide how
well it performs.. however, i'm hopeful that the ae68 will be able to run all
of it's instructions in less than four cycles, with the easy instructions
running in one cycle..

oh, and i've been checking out notebook prices.. i plan to buy a new one
before i graduate.. so, that i can make use of my student discount.. so, i've
been checking out the prices on various core duo notebooks.. it seems that
the macbook is the cheapest.. for some reason, it's cheaper than the
equivalent PC notebooks.. plus, it has a cool design.. the mac book is even
cheaper than my current fujitsu.. i've also decided the integrated graphics
is perfectly suitable for me.. i have hardly any time to play games anymore..
i must be growing old.. i'm turning down invitations to play games.. and the
GMA950 is supposed to be decently good enough to play games from 2004 and
earlier easily.. so, it should be perfectly good enough for my needs..

also, i'm waiting for a domain name to expire.. a domain name that i've been
waiting for the last 6 years... it's supposed to expire this week, and the
owner doesn't seem to have renewed it yet.. so, i'm hopeful.. if it does
expire, i will buy it up and set up a VPS and run some nice services from
it.. i could run my own mail server, own website, and various other stuff..
i'm actually thinking of offering the ae68 (once it's complete) on my website
and have people download it... i could even accept paypal payments.. hehe...
that'd be interesting... i might triple license the ae68, GPL, LGPL, BSD and
charge a license fee for the LGPL/BSD licenses.. i'm not sure yet though..
still thinking about it.. it'll depend on how good the ae68 is.. if i can
make some income from it, it might motivate me to further improve some of the
other cores i've designed before.. and re-license them.. it would probably be
a hobby thing for now though..

anyway, that's all for now..