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Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 16:30:40 -0600
To: hobbyplat AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Hello
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References: <20020418215922 DOT GA19224 AT yoshi DOT picogui DOT org> <200204182210 DOT g3IMAJG13605 AT envy DOT delorie DOT com>
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From: Micah Dowty <micah AT yoshi DOT picogui DOT org>
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Hm... this could indeed be cool. I've been wanting to prototype this on an FPGA. My ideas is that you'd have one CPU to run the general-purpose OS and applications on. This would be on the main board in this case. I guess the plug-in card could be like a really smart video card... It would have a CPU that runs the PicoGUI server, with easily upgradeable firmware. There would be a custom circuit that implements picogui's rendering code in hardware. I think the design is flexible enough that this could work...
Anyway, I'm not sure if my digital design skills are up to this, but I'll let everyone know if I come up with any useful hardware designs.

On Thu, Apr 18, 2002 at 06:10:19PM -0400, DJ Delorie wrote:
> 
> > Anyway, I don't know how much time I'll have available, but I'd like
> > to help. I've been dabbling in embedded systems hardware and FPGAs,
> > and I've been working on the PicoGUI (http://piocgui.org) graphical
> > architecture for embedded systems. I have this little dream of
> > building a custom system on a chip that incorporates dual RISC CPUs
> > and a custom graphics engine, but that might be a bit power hungry
> > for a handheld using current technology :)
> 
> If we get the interface right, there's no reason why we couldn't use
> high-powered CPUs in the slot for non-battery applications too.

-- 
Only you can prevent creeping featurism!