
Comparison of GreenArrays Chips with TI Micropower Controllers (2010) [pdf] - bshanks
http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/WP003-100617-msp430.pdf
======
microtsunami
At a minimum order of 10pcs at $20 a pop, I wish I could afford to play with
the GA144, or even imagine using it in a design. You can get a single MSP430
for under $2 from TI.

Sure, I can understand why GA went with 144 cores. Because of their insistence
on software defined i/o, you need them. Smarter move would have been GA4+I2C
allowing any number of them to be glued using their asynchronous i/o.

Whatever. Their fate is not my problem. Would have loved for them to be
insanely successful.

Computing is so ____ing boring these days.

~~~
avhon1
You can purchase one gA144f18a with an easy-to-solder breakout board for 35
USD from Schmartboard:

[http://schmartboard.com/schmartboard-ez-qfn-88-pins-0-4mm-
pi...](http://schmartboard.com/schmartboard-ez-qfn-88-pins-0-4mm-
pitch-2-x-2-grid-bundled-with-a-greenarrays-ga144-ic-202-0048-02/)

------
forthfifthsixth
People always complaining about the cost of the dev board or about how they
can't think of a practical application. Maybe those are valid criticisms, but
honestly we have something unique here, try not to dismiss it with vapid
complaints. This computer and the engineering culture from which it comes is
radically different. It's more efficient then anything else I've seen. Sure,
it makes some things more complicated to program but makes many other things
vastly simpler. It enables a level of software control that approaches the
functionality of an FPGA yet retains the interactively of a fully software
solution. And it's fun to program, and simple enough to understand everything
about it. I wish we had more computers like them

~~~
fractallyte
Erlang is a high-level language ideally suited to concurrent ( _not_ parallel)
computing on multiple cores.

Is there any kind of cross-over here, with GreenArrays processors? Is it
feasible to have an Erlang VM running on a GA chip, and would it have any
advantages over the current (typically x86) hardware?

(From the Erlang website
([http://erlang.org/faq/implementations.html](http://erlang.org/faq/implementations.html)):
_" Getting Erlang to run on, say, an 8 bit CPU with 32kByte of RAM is not
feasible. People successfully run the Ericsson implementation of Erlang on
systems with as little as 16MByte of RAM. It is reasonably straightforward to
fit Erlang itself into 2MByte of persistant storage (e.g. a flash disk)."_)

Another question: the computing demands of self-driving cars are somewhat
self-defeating
([https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-11/driverles...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-11/driverless-
cars-are-giving-engineers-a-fuel-economy-headache)). Isn't low-power computer
vision a perfect match for GA chips...?

~~~
forthfifthsixth
No chance of that, GreenArrays processors are arrays of f18a computers - each
of which only has 64 18bit words of RAM. Orders of magnitude less then Erlang
requires. I would start with the product briefs if you want to learn more:
[http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/downindex.html](http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/downindex.html)

------
malanj
This comparison looks like bad content marketing at best. "The MSP430 family
certainly includes peripheral options that current Green Array chips do not,
such as flash memories and timers." => TI's 430 range peripherals is imo one
of the primary use-cases.

MSP430's aren't trying to be energy efficient per operation - they are really
bad at processing. What they are good at is running complex
circuits/peripherals at a low total energy consumption over a long time.

The fact that they're running at 8Mhz is telling... that's far from the "low
power" level. As far as I recall, you generally run using internal low-
frequency RC oscillator for low power, and then just boot up the high speed
crystal oscillator if you really need it.

~~~
forthfifthsixth
I can't imagine the utility of low-power processors that "aren't trying to be
energy efficient per operation" and are "really bad at processing" \- I
thought that was the whole point!

These really are completely different type of computers - I believe if you can
apply the MSP430 successfully to your application then the GA144 is probably
the wrong chip to use.

But what if you need real-time nano-second reaction times on many separate
pins? What if you need to process a 30 Mhz signal? While controlling a display
and accepting input? All at the same time?

Then you might need the GA144, which can do all those things at the same time
without needing to worry about interrupts or waking up from low power sleep
modes or any of the other complex mechanism computers employ to minimize power
loss.

~~~
michaelt

      I can't imagine the utility of low-power processors that
      "aren't trying to be energy efficient per operation"
    

Consider the Amazon Dash Button.

10 seconds a week running a WiFi radio, TCP/IP, SSL and all that. 604,790
seconds a week waiting for a button to be pressed. Battery powered.

If you can monitor a button on 1 microamp, and run WiFi on 60 milliamps, 50%
of your battery capacity will go on sleeping and 50% on waking.

And wake-state power consumption is dominated by the radio module, so the best
way to cut down on wake state power consumption is to make the wake as short
as possible.

~~~
forthfifthsixth
That's the other side of low power devices, and part of the the beauty of
asynchronous logic, it does nothing better then anything else! Computers like
the ga144 'sleep' mid instruction waiting for a pin (button) to change,
consuming only gate leakage for as long as needed.

------
Hasz
I'm not sure I see where this is used.

It's way to expensive to put into a consumer product (adding another cell is
way cheaper than shaving 100uA).

For niche products (can afford a $20 uC on the BOM), development cost is non-
trivial, so the excellent MSP430 documentation and support negates any
advantage the GreenArray product might have.

In essence, it's too expensive for the low and high end (albeit in different
units of cost) so who do they go after?

If they want to fix #2, don't use a 10 chip MOQ ($200) and charge $450 for the
demo board. Hand out a few at cost to some ECE departments or at a conference
and let people do cool things with your tech. Their trials an tribulations are
free publicity and support material.

~~~
yiyus
> the excellent MSP430 documentation and support negates any advantage the
> GreenArray product might have.

The advantage of the GA144 is not that it has slightly better specs. It is a
completely new paradigm. This is basically a new zeppelin that can take you
from one continent to another in a comparable time to a commercial flight, and
you are complaining because the price of the ticket is much higher.

I do not think the point of these new chips is not make a dent in the market
(either for consumer products or enthusiasts), but to show that radically
different computing systems are possible. Maybe it is not directly profitable,
but it surely is mind-opening.

~~~
Hasz
I’m not trying to complain, and I don’t disagree.

My wording is used.

If the GA144 can actually be better than existing solution, there’s thousands
of engineers who would happily try it. But until GreenArray can demonstrate a
compelling use case, an unmet need, something — the product won’t make it very
far.

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seltzered_
Related, Chuck Moore’s 2013 strangeloop talk on greenarrays:
[https://www.infoq.com/presentations/power-144-chip](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/power-144-chip)

------
gaze
MSP430: Has IDE and toolchain that's familiar for people

GreenArrays: You can use our chips if you unlearn EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT
SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE.

That said, it's amazing hardware

~~~
dang
Can you please not use all caps for emphasis? It's basically yelling and the
site guidelines ask everyone not to:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

