Jonathan Oxer
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>> Crazy multi-processor ARM-based Arduino system
Thu, Aug 20th 8:44am 2009: Practical Arduino
Originally posted on Practical Arduino This is so freaking awesome I don't even know where to start. I want to tell you about ten different things at once and they're all trying to crowd through the door at the same time and getting jammed together! An email to the Arduino developers mailing list a few hours ago announced that the Arduino development environment had been ported to the ARM processor to support a project under development to create a reconfigurable computer consisting of tiny tiles. Each tile is about 2 square inches and is essentially a micro-sized motherboard: it's a self-contained computer with a CPU, RAM, EEPROM, I/O lines, comms, status LEDs, and an input button. Each edge has reversible connectors that allow them to be plugged together in any direction, even upside down, and each tile automatically detects its neighbors so it can start communicating with them. Power is passed through from one edge to another so to create a parallel array all you have to do is plug a bunch of them together, connect power to one edge of any tile, and it all springs to life. Pure brilliance. This is what four of them plugged together look like:
But the genius doesn't end there. They also implemented a crazy custom bootloader that allows software to propagate across a cluster, effectively allowing a programmer to "inject" a new piece of software into one of the edges and it will spread across the system. You can see it demonstrated in this video where they start with two separate clusters and inject a new program into one cluster and let it spread, then link the clusters together and it continues into the second set of tiles:
Right now they have an Arduino fork for the ARM code required to make this work, but hopefully it'll be incorporated into the Arduino mainline before long.
They've made their boards available for purchase through Liquidware so soon anyone will be able to start playing around with them for just US$57 / node.
Lots more information at:
Original blog post
Arduino forum post
Wired coverage
There's lots more to say but for now I'll just point you to those references and let you check it out for yourself.
Originally posted on Practical Arduino This is so freaking awesome I don't even know where to start. I want to tell you about ten different things at once and they're all trying to crowd through the door at the same time and getting jammed together! An email to the Arduino developers mailing list a few hours ago announced that the Arduino development environment had been ported to the ARM processor to support a project under development to create a reconfigurable computer consisting of tiny tiles. Each tile is about 2 square inches and is essentially a micro-sized motherboard: it's a self-contained computer with a CPU, RAM, EEPROM, I/O lines, comms, status LEDs, and an input button. Each edge has reversible connectors that allow them to be plugged together in any direction, even upside down, and each tile automatically detects its neighbors so it can start communicating with them. Power is passed through from one edge to another so to create a parallel array all you have to do is plug a bunch of them together, connect power to one edge of any tile, and it all springs to life. Pure brilliance. This is what four of them plugged together look like:
But the genius doesn't end there. They also implemented a crazy custom bootloader that allows software to propagate across a cluster, effectively allowing a programmer to "inject" a new piece of software into one of the edges and it will spread across the system. You can see it demonstrated in this video where they start with two separate clusters and inject a new program into one cluster and let it spread, then link the clusters together and it continues into the second set of tiles:
Right now they have an Arduino fork for the ARM code required to make this work, but hopefully it'll be incorporated into the Arduino mainline before long.
They've made their boards available for purchase through Liquidware so soon anyone will be able to start playing around with them for just US$57 / node.
Lots more information at:
Original blog post
Arduino forum post
Wired coverage
There's lots more to say but for now I'll just point you to those references and let you check it out for yourself.[ Back to top ]
