Wim 🈂️ @wim_v12e@cybre.space

If your community/organisation/company is interested, I am keen to give on-line talks about #FrugalComputing, aka Low Carbon and Sustainable Computing.

Example topics are:

Frugal computing
On the need for low-carbon and sustainable computing and the path towards zero-carbon computing.

https://wimvanderbauwhede.github.io/articles/frugal-computing/

How to reduce the carbon footprint of your digital lifestyle

https://wimvanderbauwhede.github.io/articles/frugal-computing-consumer/

Frugal computing: developer perspective
On the need for low-carbon and sustainable computing and what developers can do about it.

https://wimvanderbauwhede.github.io/articles/frugal-computing-developer/

But happy to discuss specific topics in this area.

(boosts much appreciated!)

#LowCarbonComputing
#SustainableComputng

I wrote an article about the need for low-carbon and #sustainable #computing and the path towards zero-carbon computing.

tl;dr:

** The problem:
* By 2040 emissions from computing alone will be close to half the emissions level acceptable to keep global warming below 2°C. This growth in computing emissions is unsustainable: it would make it virtually impossible to meet the emissions warming limit.
* The emissions from production of computing devices far exceed the emissions from operating them, so even if devices are more energy efficient producing more of them will make the emissions problem worse. Therefore we must extend the useful life of our computing devices.
** The solution:
As a society we need to start treating computational resources as finite and precious, to be utilised only when necessary, and as effectively as possible. We need frugal computing: achieving the same results for less energy.
** The vision: please read the article, I'm out of characters.

https://wimvanderbauwhede.github.io/articles/frugal-computing/

Yay, I now have #pleroma running on a PYNQ-Z1 FPGA board. It has a 650MHz dual-core Arm Cortex-A9 with 512MB RAM. That is not enough memory to run #mastodon though.

I wrote a short article "The politics of writing compilers", some questions compiler researchers and writers might want to ask themselves.

https://wimvanderbauwhede.github.io/articles/politics-of-compiler-writing/

#computing
#compilers

"The Return of Gopher"

https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/23/the_return_of_the_gopher/

@fedivision vote NCYB

I forgot to say so but this is of course for free.

%\x { #00 #0100 ;quoteArg JSR2 }

%\* { LIT MUL2 #0100 ;quoteOp JSR2 }

and

%lamba-call:2 { ;lambda2args JSR2 }

The quoteArg and quoteOp functions store the quoted symbols tagged with and identifier (Arg, Op or Const)
Quoting an opcode is done using LIT.

The ;lambda*args functions read all stored symbols and unquote them. Unquoting is the magic incantation #00 STR BRK (thanks, Devine!).

I was also interested in quoting (deferring computation of an operation) and Devine taught me a neat trick that lets you do this in uxntal. So I used this to emulate lambda functions.
The example shows how I create a lambda function with 2 arguments and call it.

|0100

6 7 [ lambda \x \y \* ] lambda-call:2

putc ( prints '*' )

It is a bit fake because the lambda \x \y \* operations put the actual function definition in the RAM and leave no trace on the stack.
So you can write this just as well as

lambda \x \y \*
6 7 lambda-call:2

So it is only a lambda function in the sense that you don't have to give it a named label. What it really shows is that you can quote symbols and unquote them later, this is really what happens here:

I have been learning uxntal (https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/uxntal.html) a bit and it has been great fun to try and figure out how to make it do things.

For example, uxn may be a stack machine, but with the macro functionality it is easy to use the memory as registers.

I created some macros x, y and ->x, ->y to read and write to slots in the zero-page memory (STZ/LDZ).

I also created some macros so that I can write e.g. "3" instead of #03 and "*" instead of MUL etc. and to print a character (putc)
And in this way, uxntal becomes (almost) a reverse Scheme.

|0100

3 ->x
4 ->y

[[ y y * ] [[[ x y * ] 2 * ] [ x x * ] + ] + ]

putc ( prints '1' )