Wherein Mike Warot describes a novel approach to computing which follows George Gilders call to waste transistors.

Sunday, December 03, 2023

BitGrid meets the Advent Of Code

 I'm a big fan of the Advent of Code, in the past, I used Lazarus/Free Pascal as my language of choice, you can see the code here. So, this year, I'm going to update the BitGrid engine, and do whatever is required to get code to run in the virtual BitGrid. You can follow my progress here.

This requires an ecosystem to support me. I've got to add I/O, programming and Debug SubSystems to the BitGrid engine. I've got to figure out a programming language, and a compiler, router, etc. I hope to get all of the 2023 problems done before Advent of Code 2024 starts.

2 comments:

pooka2c said...

Certainly brillant! I love this type of approach and am inspired to try something like it myself. Your architecture reminded me of the cell matrix:

https://www.cellmatrix.com/entryway/products/pub/nano/nano.html

One of the cool things they explored was local reprogrammability - cells are either in compute or program mode - and so it gets complicated fast! But they end up with cool examples like counters that are programmed as needed to fit the precision, work around faults etc.

pooka2c said...

Sorry, their more recent website might be a better place to start:

https://songlinesystems.com/

The EEXIST book is beautiful and includes explanations of the cell matrix.

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I fix things, I take pictures, I write, and marvel at the joy of life. I'm trying to leave the world in better condition than when I found it.