Hi all,
Recently, I saw a post from Steve Wiseman go by on the Transputer
discussion list.
I thought I'd drop a note and mention that you could just turn the
Balloon into a Transputer.
http://www.transterpreter.org/
We've written a small VM that executes the Extended Transputer
Bytecode. Or, if you prefer, we have a VM that lets you execute
programs written in occam-pi on most any embedded target around, as
long as you've got the space for the VM. Weird, I know. The
Transterpreter sits in around 16K of flash and, depending on the app,
only needs 100s of words of RAM to execute. (Or, if you prefer: the VM
itself imposes a very small overhead on the user's programs.) We're
currently working on bringing ARM support up to "first class." If
executed on top of a (RT-)Linux layer, then we're done---our POSIX
port should "just work," but it's also easy enough to run the VM on
the bare metal.
Targets we've executed on in the past include the LEGO RCX, the
Surveyor SRV-1 ARM and Blackfin, the MSP430, and just about anything
else we can get our hands on. At this point, we consider the SRV-1 to
be well supported, and are working on making the ARM a really solid
build with lots of aspects of the core being well-supported.
We have some releases on the site, but we're in the process of
reworking our build system, so we can release in one step. A new
release with a new VM wrapper for the ARM will come out before the end
of October.
Cheers,
Matt
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