XCore Exchange

Berni wrote:Well already in another post i had the idea of rendering a simple 3D scene in real time on it or draw those beutiful looking fractal images (google chaoscope) and use one of the ethernet ports on it to host a website and display it on it. What would be totally sweet is if it would raytrace render a simple scene.

In my opinion it would be a killer program to have it run out of the box to wow the user when he first powers it on.

You don't need to have 64 processors to render a 3d-scene in real-time: 3 threads will do! :mrgreen:

-Yvo

Well i was thinking a nice big scene with a fair polygon count. Like meaby the camera flying trough a moderately detailed city and meaby have it fly trough some detailed trees and such.

It would be great to get some simpler raytracing going on it since even PCs have problems with doing that in real time.

You'd need an awful lot of processors in order to compete with a single 4ghz PC. Raw performance, floating point, etc. make it pretty powerful. Having said that, I remember VMLabs' Merlin had a fixed point raytracer with 4 cores. Granted, it was just a sphere and a plane, but still...

-Yvo

could you please comment on expected price for mentioned 4GHz computer (with some specs and form factor)?

nieuwhzn wrote:The XMP-64 was supposed to come out in December and I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't play with it under the Christmas tree. Hopefully in January.

It can't be too far away... http://www.xmoslinkers.org/forum/viewto ... 4442#p4432 - nice pair of ethernet ports there as well at the top :D

Example, Xbox 360 for 160€, tree 3.2Ghz PowerPC with two hyperthreading task per processor, so 6 Tasks in total on tree processor, processor capable of floating point calcs.
Additional, there exist a GPU processor, 512Mbyte of Memory.

Running and self-learning Neuronal Networks including self building and self-optimizing could be
interesting. Basically everything relative simple, that scales up to complicate.
Example, use 60 processors for cellular automata, one data connectivity, annother for selecting the winner and control the other 60 ones, with 4K of mem each (Neuronal network too), each running
8 threads there are 480 different neuronal/cellular/... networks that have learned and classified at once. At the same time, one single network could be very complicated.

What would I do with an XMP-64.??????

Given that the question is what would I do with an XMP-64, as is, rather than what would I wish the board to be.....

Hmm I think that it would be very useful (and I am not sure how this could be a demo app at the moment without lots of blinky lights) for modelling Neural Networks on.

Not the usual mathematically intensive models that are a little old hat. But some newer ideas that make use of the distributed memory/processing, event oriented execution and message passing that the XMOS processors are great for.

I would like to take a couple of audio input streams (Stereo mics, left & right). Process them using FFT into two time versus power band multi input streams. Throw it into a large neural network modelled on Biological Neurones and breed a solution using genetic algorithms to give a single time versus power band multi output stream that we reconstitute into a mono audio output to drive a loud speaker.

Why, because it would be fun, could produce some novel results and (highly unlikely) if successful may even pass the turing test.

:ugeek:

I thought i should jump into this...

I think the XMP-64 is too much for me right now to think about creating something with but with the XDK i would do what im planing to do with my XK-1 or if i get the XC-2... which is a complete home control device. Where i can control everything from SHADES on my windows to the heat in my tub.

Im planning on creating a device to control all the below :

Lights, TV Sets, Cable, DVD, Coffee Maker and many other things. I plan to use smaller devices like PICs for each seperate device that doesnt have a wireless way for communication such as Lights and Coffee maker... And i plan to code all the IR stuff myself.

Its going to be nice and simple. But i plan to use a larger LCD such as a 4.3" or maybe just the 3.5 but with touch screen also.

Hmmmmm.....

Oh, I know!

I would use it for simulation, and eda tool development platform ; )
I would build a collection of simulated core funtions and work from there.
I would perhaps then wrap it all into a monitor with isp and sense points.
The Xore's potentially replaces most all fat lut sockets fpga's. For the custom
fast accumaltor stuff dsp etc. , I like Anti-fuse fpga's blended w/ static Proasics.
These fpga's are not hot and are very granular. I believe the combination of
Xcore with the antifuse/proasic in an all in one platform self booting with all
system and eda tools needed too spin ones own machines with tools is the
ticket. Yaah that's the ticket.

virtually,
Shawn