I'm still alive. But I've retired or at least taken an extended hiatus from my writing hobby, which in retrospect was probably a pandemic coping mechanism more than a lot of things lol.
I only came here because my in box is blowing up due to the traffic hacker news is driving to my site, and so then I see that this article is like #3 today. Not bad considering I don't really remember writing it!
I love this account! My dog also is a great pup, with some behaviors we’re working on, like barking and reactivity. From the scenery it looks like central MA if I had to guess too!
haha yes, excellent suggestions! I did think about ternary logic actually but I don't know of an FPGA that supports it. I considered creating like a primitive that burns 2 register bits to approximate it even, and just throw away the 4th state and pretend I have 3-state logic on all the layers above. but i have enough on my hands just trying to get the stupid timing working on a simple CPU. Im not actually a CPU designer so I dont really know what I'm doing lol.
Throwing away 25% of your bits sound wasteful... what you need is a moderately large power of 2 that is very close to a power of 3. These can be found by computing the continued fraction of log(3)/log(2). The sequence of convergents starts thus 2/1, 3/2, 5/3, 8/5, 11/7, 19/12, 46/29, 65/41, 84/53. Some good choices seem to be 2^8-3^5=13 (loses 5%) or 2^46≈3^29 (loses 2.5%).
You can also detect Z state by driving the input high, reading, then driving the input low, reading. If both reads are different, then you have a Z state. Otherwise, the input is the read state.
This is a fantastic hobby project. Have you thought about doing something with the "extra" bit along the lines of tagging bytes for type or garbage collection or whatever like the lisp machines?
I was really honored for a chance to talk with one of computer gaming's true pioneers, Scott Adams. His text adventure games launched an entire game genre and influenced and inspired a lot of other programmers and game developers.
If you read the interview and come away thinking, "why didn't he ask him about X?", today's your lucky day, because Scott has graciously agreed to stop by here and answer a few questions. He's new to HN, so be sure and give him a warm welcome!
Thanks Scott - I'm really enjoying sitting back and reading all the great discussions you've been having here and interesting questions people have, nothing makes me happier as a writer than to be able to spark something like that.
I only came here because my in box is blowing up due to the traffic hacker news is driving to my site, and so then I see that this article is like #3 today. Not bad considering I don't really remember writing it!