POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : BPM Server Time
4 Sep 2024 17:17:49 EDT (-0400)
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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Microcode
Date: 11 Jun 2010 12:41:58
Message: <4c126756$1@news.povray.org>
Mike Raiford wrote:
> A sequence of one or more control signal sets configured to execute the 
> desired instruction. 

I guess, depending on how you define "control signal sets" and "configured" 
and "sequence", sure.  *I* consider it microcode if the configuration is ROM 
instead of hardwired logic, and "sequence" implies having something 
counter-like to sequence it.

The idea being that all you need to change what instructions a microcoded 
CPU supprts is to change the ROM itself without rewiring other gates.

People used to build computers that would load different microcode depending 
on the program you were running. The first Smalltalk machines had a 
Smalltalk microcode set, so there weren't any "primitives" - the CPU ran 
Smalltalk code directly. Other machines could switch between FORTRAN and 
COBOL microcode.  The original 8" floppies were designed to hold the 
microcode for those mainframes.


> n mine, for example, the microcode rom is 
> basically a big LUT allowing for 16 microcode steps each instruction, 
> since an instruction can have more than one phase:

And how do you step thru those instructions?  A program counter type thing? 
Then it's likely microcode in my book. :-)

Don't think I'm trying to be authoritative on this one.  There's probably 
some actual official definition out there that's relatively arbitrary due to 
things on the edge of the definition.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: New BPM
Date: 11 Jun 2010 12:44:23
Message: <4c1267e7$1@news.povray.org>
Invisible wrote:
> Even so, I'd suggest that it's more or less infeasible to determine how 
> long a calculation takes.

Nonsense. People do it all the time.  If nothing else, do it by 
experimentation. Try sleeping one milisecond using the technique, measure 
how fast the clock goes, and adjust. You can even adjust dynamically based 
on when you wake up. If you wake up 29 microseconds later than you asked, 
subtract 29 microseconds the next time.

> Either way, this would be *so much* easier if I could ask for absolute 
> rather than relative start times...

Read the absolute time, subtract it from the time you want to wake up, 
subtract the length of time you were late last time, and sleep that long. 
When you wake up, read the absolute time, subtract it from the time you 
wanted to wake up, and store that for the next cycle.

> (I also love the way the internal implementation look like it's likely 
> to fail if you call threadDelay just before midnight... That's a nice 
> touch.)

What system are you looking at?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.


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From: Mike Raiford
Subject: Re: Microcode
Date: 11 Jun 2010 13:20:00
Message: <4c127040@news.povray.org>
On 6/11/2010 11:41 AM, Darren New wrote:

>
> And how do you step thru those instructions? A program counter type
> thing? Then it's likely microcode in my book. :-)
>

well, of course there's some sort of counter. Else how would it work? ;)


> Don't think I'm trying to be authoritative on this one. There's probably
> some actual official definition out there that's relatively arbitrary
> due to things on the edge of the definition.
>

I'm sure there is ... But I don't necessarily think it has to be ROM, 
per se, it could be a gate array...


-- 
~Mike


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Microcode
Date: 11 Jun 2010 13:37:47
Message: <4c12746b$1@news.povray.org>
Mike Raiford wrote:
> well, of course there's some sort of counter. Else how would it work? ;)

That's what I'm saying. It *is* possible to design logic that doesn't have a 
counter like that.

> I'm sure there is ... But I don't necessarily think it has to be ROM, 
> per se, it could be a gate array...

Anything that works like a ROM where all you need to do is change *that* 
part to have a new instruction set would do. Whether your ROM is implemented 
with wires or gates doesn't matter that much to me.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Microcode
Date: 12 Jun 2010 04:57:01
Message: <4c134bdd$1@news.povray.org>
Darren New wrote:

>> By contrast, the CPU I'm designing has no such thing.
> 
> I agree. There's no code there. You have hardwired logic.

It seems we are in agreement then.

(I'm actually wondering if microcode would have been easier though...!)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: New BPM
Date: 12 Jun 2010 06:04:11
Message: <4c135b9b$1@news.povray.org>
Darren New wrote:

> What system are you looking at?

The GHC threading library.

The source code looks like it does a POSIX "get time of day" call, and 
then uses the "microseconds past midnight" field to determine when the 
schedule the wakeup call.

It strikes me that if between now and the intended wakeup time the clock 
wraps past midnight, things are going to go wrong. But maybe I'm mistaken...

I'm also not sure if the same thing happens under Windows. It's kinda 
tricky to follow all the CPP directives.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Scientific experiments
Date: 12 Jun 2010 14:43:38
Message: <4c13d55a$1@news.povray.org>
Right. So I just fired up Cubase, imported an audio track, dialed in the 
BPM I found from that website, and listened to the click track against 
the recording.

Except for some phase-alignment problems, and the click track gradually 
going out of phase, the BPM readings I had were very, very close to 
being correct. Close enough that it's difficult to figure out whether 
they're too high or too low.

In other words, the trivial algorithm the website uses already produces 
really very accurate measurements. Nothing to fix here. (Unless you 
actually wanted beat-perfect matching, rather than a general estimate of 
speed...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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