Stupid question, would a quick&dirty LLVM backend for univac be possible to write, or are there inherent incompatibilities due to its weird architecture?
What a great write up, and a video too! Even though Minecraft stuff ofc was a bit of a bait, it would be interesting see the answer to "Can it run Doom?".
It could probably run the code for doom, once recompiled for the risc-v emulator, but given that the only output is a paper teletype, displaying it would be a problem
Hah, I heard about this at VCF East this year, but didn't get to check out the exhibit. There was another MC server demo running on old Macs IIRC. Shame the event was cut short due to a bomb threat.
I watched the video when it came out, I've been a fan of his stuff for a while. It'd been a while since he uploaded and I was rewatching some of his videos the night before this was uploaded!
Favourite article I've read in a while, what a delight. I wonder what kind of performance you could get if someone hand wrote a dedicated, modern C compiler for it.
According to the article, it takes 40 univac instructions to run a single risc-v instruction, so potentially up to 40x the current performance. Though you'd probably need more instructions to do things than a single one, so probably less than that, say 10-20x? Especially if you made a custom compiler that made the best use of the hardware you could, since it's weird
Stupid question, would a quick&dirty LLVM backend for univac be possible to write, or are there inherent incompatibilities due to its weird architecture?
What a great write up, and a video too! Even though Minecraft stuff ofc was a bit of a bait, it would be interesting see the answer to "Can it run Doom?".
> a bit of a bait
"a bit" is doing a lot of work there. It was absolute nonsense. They were no closer to running a Minecraft server than I am to running UKGOV.
They hosted a program that allowed minecraft clients to connect... I'd class that as a minecraft server, even if it wasn't a very good one
Yeah, my thought exactly, execution lacked, but i do admire the attempt.
It could probably run the code for doom, once recompiled for the risc-v emulator, but given that the only output is a paper teletype, displaying it would be a problem
> but given that the only output is a paper teletype, displaying it would be a problem
You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike. A cacodaemon floats by, hissing.
And given the NES emulator example, take half an hour per frame.
"What's My Line" had in-show advertisements for the UNIVAC computer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEQlOrPs6fw
Hah, I heard about this at VCF East this year, but didn't get to check out the exhibit. There was another MC server demo running on old Macs IIRC. Shame the event was cut short due to a bomb threat.
Related: https://github.com/TheScienceElf/UNIVAC-1219 https://youtu.be/rU8sCbwB8XU
I watched the video when it came out, I've been a fan of his stuff for a while. It'd been a while since he uploaded and I was rewatching some of his videos the night before this was uploaded!
Favourite article I've read in a while, what a delight. I wonder what kind of performance you could get if someone hand wrote a dedicated, modern C compiler for it.
According to the article, it takes 40 univac instructions to run a single risc-v instruction, so potentially up to 40x the current performance. Though you'd probably need more instructions to do things than a single one, so probably less than that, say 10-20x? Especially if you made a custom compiler that made the best use of the hardware you could, since it's weird
beautiful, thank you