SBTCVM. Its hard to believe that mark 2 was first committed to GitHub over a year ago, but its true. In fact, SBTCVM has been in development for over 2 years. So, in light of Gen 1's codebase being retired, lets take a look at its history.
Just a quick look at Wikipedia.
The origin of mark 2 actually traces back to me going to look up something on Wikipedia, and getting lost in the maze of related articles until i stumbled across "balanced ternary".
calculations operational, sir.
On June 3rd 2016, A curious little python program poped up on github.
Its name, was BalTCalc of course. and as you might guess, its a calculator, that works in balanced ternary. This calculator needed some backend code, so i wrote libbaltcalc to go along with it. Little did i know, that one library would lead me to starting a certain project.
Demo ahoy!
September 24th 2016. I had been coding away at a rather alien project for myself, a virtual computer of sorts. TDA was just as its acronym suggests, Ternary, and a Demonstration of a computer Architecture. The code was buggy, slow, and didn't even have memory writes. but It did one thing: Show that i actually could simulate a balanced ternary computer in python, and prove libbaltcalc was indeed capable of such. Its worth noting, that what is now SBTCVM's assembler was begun partway through TDA's development because of me growing sick and tired of base 3 machine code programming.
Specs:
x6 729 word (6trit) memory banks (roughly 4KT)
x1 729 word IObus
4trit instruction set
SBTCVM is born
March 9th, 2017. SBTCVM Mark 1.1 didn't change too much of TDA's code, but it did have some important improvements, most notably address calculation in SBTCVM's assembler. Mark 1.1 was also a stepping stone for a much more capable VM.
19,683.
March 17, 2017. SBTCVM Mark 2 makes its presence known.
with a whopping 162 KT of combined memory. (108KT of unbroken trytes) Mark 2 is vastly superior to the Mark 1.x machines, and a worthy holder of Gen 1's final form. It introduced features that made SBTCVM vastly more useful in studying balanced ternary computing.
For one, it was the first to include a graphical calculator, the first to include framebuffered graphics, and even the first to reproduce digital sampled audio. Mark 2's set of utilities did balloon out of control in hindsight, but now we know better what tools are actually needed. and what aren't. the calculator is always handy for a quick bit of calculation after all. and yes i still have 19,683 stuck in my head. :)
Specs:
162 KT of combined memory. (108KT of unbroken trytes)
27 KT of memory per bank (18KT of unbroken trytes per bank)
6 memory banks
1-trit mono and 3-trit RGB framebuffer graphics at 114x81 and 54x38
2 text modes
1-trit digital samples at 2 and 4 KHZ
3 voice square wave sound chip
hardware-thread-based multitasking
various conversion tools relating to the internal data formats.
In conclusion:
I hope you enjoyed that short look back on SBTCVM's first generation codebase, as the SBTCVM project moves on to bigger and better things.
Simple Balanced Ternary Computer Virtual Machine - A virtual base 3 computer.
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Saturday, May 19, 2018
SBTCVM Gen 2: on the road to alpha.
End of an era:
SBTCVM Mark 2 has been been in development for a while, and while Mark 2 has served the project well, and has taught the dev team some important things, its come to the point where Mark 2 has become too complex under the hood to make the jump to python 3 reasonably, and continue development in a orderly fashion.
Its with this, that I announce the official end-of-development for SBTCVM Mark 2, and its underlying "gen 1" codebase. Its replacement is currently being developed.
The future:
SBTCVM Generation 2 is slated to drasticly change not only how the VM works under the hood, and how its CPU works, but also how its used. With advanced features like SBTVDI, a virtual disk system and psudo-filesystem implementation that will work in tandem with a new subproject: SBTCVM DOS.
Some other features being explored are more advanced sound (like the digital sample system that was added to Mark 2 at the last minute), more interactive vm programs, and less cluttered, streamlined user interfaces. Thanks to the new modular codebase, plans exist for terminal-only, pygame, and a TK version when time allows. with the terminal version slated to be a subset of the more fleshed out TK and pygame versions.
Gen 2 is currently VERY early in development, so again, its hard to say what the exact details will be, or when it will be announced. That said, a "gen 2" status page can now be found on the blog (see the link bar above), and blog updates will be posted on major developments.
SBTCVM Mark 2 has been been in development for a while, and while Mark 2 has served the project well, and has taught the dev team some important things, its come to the point where Mark 2 has become too complex under the hood to make the jump to python 3 reasonably, and continue development in a orderly fashion.
Its with this, that I announce the official end-of-development for SBTCVM Mark 2, and its underlying "gen 1" codebase. Its replacement is currently being developed.
The future:
SBTCVM Generation 2 is slated to drasticly change not only how the VM works under the hood, and how its CPU works, but also how its used. With advanced features like SBTVDI, a virtual disk system and psudo-filesystem implementation that will work in tandem with a new subproject: SBTCVM DOS.
Some other features being explored are more advanced sound (like the digital sample system that was added to Mark 2 at the last minute), more interactive vm programs, and less cluttered, streamlined user interfaces. Thanks to the new modular codebase, plans exist for terminal-only, pygame, and a TK version when time allows. with the terminal version slated to be a subset of the more fleshed out TK and pygame versions.
Gen 2 is currently VERY early in development, so again, its hard to say what the exact details will be, or when it will be announced. That said, a "gen 2" status page can now be found on the blog (see the link bar above), and blog updates will be posted on major developments.