This is the best paper I've read in a long time -- this
has to go in my "Top 10" favorite posts of all time on HN...
(To PaulHoule: Another truly excellent post of yours to HN, thank you very much, the HN community and myself appreciate it greatly!)
Anyway, let's delve into it -- here's the key quote, IMHO:
>"As the previous discussion showed, SUBLEQ is, of course,
not the target realization for optical computing. Its purpose
is to showcase the simplest form a general-purpose optical
computer could take and an intermediary step we take.
It can be implemented with less than 100 logic gates and, given
enough memory, able to emulate a full x86
with a graphics
card running Windows and Doom™ loaded, while crunching
AI models as a background task (admittedly all extremely
slowly)."
Now that is truly awesome!
Also, it should be pointed out that if SUBLEQ could be implemented optically, it could also be implemented digitally, say, on the smallest of small gate count FPGA's...
While such a FPGA Soft CPU would not be fast -- it would definitely be interesting, and probably very simple (comparatively!) to implement!
(To PaulHoule: Another truly excellent post of yours to HN, thank you very much, the HN community and myself appreciate it greatly!)
Anyway, let's delve into it -- here's the key quote, IMHO:
>"As the previous discussion showed, SUBLEQ is, of course, not the target realization for optical computing. Its purpose is to showcase the simplest form a general-purpose optical computer could take and an intermediary step we take.
It can be implemented with less than 100 logic gates and, given enough memory, able to emulate a full x86
with a graphics card running Windows and Doom™ loaded, while crunching AI models as a background task (admittedly all extremely slowly)."
Now that is truly awesome!
Also, it should be pointed out that if SUBLEQ could be implemented optically, it could also be implemented digitally, say, on the smallest of small gate count FPGA's...
While such a FPGA Soft CPU would not be fast -- it would definitely be interesting, and probably very simple (comparatively!) to implement!
(Also, it might be implementable on a tiny IC, for example, Sam Zeloof's "Z2" 1,000 gate IC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS5ycm7VfXg)
Anyway, 5+ Stars for this excellent paper!
Upvoted and favorited!