July 2014 - Oberon - mailman3.inf.ethz.ch

Spartan 6 Kickstarter project
by Aubrey.McIntosh＠Alumni.UTexas.Net 12 Oct '14

12 Oct '14

There is a Kickstarter project to produce a Spartan 6 board. This reached its funding goal in 4 days and will run for about 3 more weeks. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1812459948/minispartan6-a-powerful-fpg… -- Aubrey McIntosh, Ph.D. 1502 Devon Circle Austin TX 78723-1814 (512)-348-7401

6 5

Nimrod is not Oberon
by Stefan Salewski 02 Oct '14

02 Oct '14

Yes, I am still subscribed to this list... And I noticed that "Oberon on FPGA" project, but have not read much about it. Recently, when I was looking about some news about Mozillas Rust language, I discovered Nimrod, a language which looks similar to Modula/Oberon, with some interesting new features. Nimrod is not very popular now, some people simple do not like the Wirthian style syntax. (And of course there are many other interesting new languages available now, Mozillas Rust with C syntax, Julia for numerical computing, Haskell -- not really new, but still modern...) But maybe someone of you may be interested in Nimrod. Of course it is no operating system, just a modern language. Keywords: Wirthian syntax, with Python indentation, system- and high-level programming, garbage-collector which still allows time critical applications, advanced generics, templates, high-level macros. Good support for parallel processing. Speed seems to be close to C. Currently Compiler generates C intermediate code. Currently there is no wikipedia entry (was rejected) so it is difficult to discover it. There was an article in DrDobbs Journal recently, and of course there is a homepage with a tutorial. http://nimrod-lang.org/ http://www.drdobbs.com/open-source/nimrod-a-new-systems-programming-languag… Not a high rank at http://langpop.corger.nl/ but Oberon is not listed at all ;-) Best regards Stefan Salewski

3 3

Trap from System.Quit in Native Oberon.
by peter＠easthope.ca 12 Jul '14

12 Jul '14

I've installed Native Oberon on a Micron TransPort TREK 2, AGP model. A sticker indicates it has Intel Pentium II. Nothing remarkable except that System.Quit gives this Trap. TRAP -14 NIL reference (0000005EH) (PC Native 05.01.2003) Unknown EIP=0016006FH EBP=00055814H When the system is started again, the screen is black for several seconds, as when the hdd is scanned after not being unmounted before powering off. System installation created the SYS part as usual and I haven't added any other parts yet. SYS isn't unmounted properly before power is cut? Very few mentions of EIP in the archives. Ideas? Thanks, ... Peter E. -- 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 12 Tel +1 360 639 0202 http://carnot.yi.org/ Bcc: peter at easthope. ca

2 1

Oberon07 for ARM : OSAP.Mod and OSAG.Mod
by Charles Perkins 10 Jul '14

10 Jul '14

Is the source for the ARM implementation of the Oberon07 compiler available? I am specifically interested in OSAP.Mod and OSAG.Mod as described in "An Oberon Compiler for the ARM Processor" by Professor Wirth.

1 0

Oberon, Macros, Realtime
by Les May 09 Jul '14

09 Jul '14

A car traveling at 100km/hr will move 27.8 metres in one second (27,800mm). In 10 microseconds (a long time by computer standards) it will travel 0.278mm. Any loss of speed by using Oberon is surely compensated by greater readability which in turn leads to maintainability and safer modification of working code. Les May

2 1

Re: [Oberon] Why macros were not implemented in oberon language?
by Diego Sardina 08 Jul '14

08 Jul '14

Hi there, > Maybe I am wrong and miss some point here. Someone could explain to me why there are no macros in Oberon? In a high level language, like Oberon, it doesn't make sense to have two constructs with the same semantic, i.e. two equal procedures P and Q (normal and inline) will exhibit the same behaviour in the entire program. The only difference is how they will be placed in the call site and this is the business of the code generator, and since the performance's result is platform dependent it shouldn't be left to the programmer how and when a procedure has to be inlined or not. And remember: There should be one -- and preferably only one -- obvious way to do it. -- Diego Sardina

3 2

Redundancy in specification; was Re (2): Why macros were not implemented in oberon language?
by peter＠easthope.ca 07 Jul '14

07 Jul '14

From: Alexander Iljin <ajsoft(a)yandex.ru> Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2014 14:08:02 +0400 > ... you really don't want to inline a procedure that > you've imported from another module. Because if that other module happens > to change the procedure afterwards, you'll have the old copy in your code. Striking how some principles of engineering practice can apply in software engineering just as well as in civil or mechanical work. In civil and mechanical design a not uncommon error of an inexperienced person is to deliberately give redundant information in a drawing or specification, with the intention of being helpful to staff doing fabrication or construction. For a trivial illustration, suppose a steel link is 1 m long and a hole is to be drilled 20 cm from one end. A junior person in a design office might put three dimensions on the drawing, 100 cm overall length, 20 cm from one end and 80 cm from the other end. Analogously to Alexander's example, a revision might change the 20 cm to 30 and overlook the 80 cm dimension. Hopefully the error is only costly in time and money. Unfortunately in some cases, a catastrphophic failure can ensue. The hazard of redundancy was never mentioned in engineering school that I recall but the old hands in a first engineering job were sharply aware of it. Regards, ... Peter E. -- 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 12 Tel +1 360 639 0202 http://carnot.yi.org/ Bcc: peter at easthope. ca

1 0

Macros or Inlining in Project Oberon 2013
by greim 07 Jul '14

07 Jul '14

Hi z, the only reason for macros or inlining is, to boost performance for very time critical things (see the car example as cited above). But we should keep in mind that Project-(FPGA)-Oberon is not only a compiler and OS but also a reconfigurable hardware. So realizing time or mission critical things in an own hardware unit is the fantastic thing that is (more or less) unique with Project-FPGA-Oberon. The only drawback is, that there is no HDL which is so clear and straight then Oberon is (not even Chisel on top of Scala on top of Java, or MyHDL on top of Python). I don't know if Active Cells development at the ETHZ <http://jg-twiki.inf.ethz.ch/pub/Main/FelixFriedrichPublications/ActiveCells…> or the Avalanche project <http://www.systems.ethz.ch/node/193> will work on this task. Anybody out there from the ETH? Regards Markus

2 1

Inline procedures
by Chris Burrows 06 Jul '14

06 Jul '14

> -----Original Message----- > From: oberon(a)moravcik.info [mailto:oberon@moravcik.info] > Sent: Saturday, 5 July 2014 9:21 PM > To: oberon(a)lists.inf.ethz.ch > Subject: Re: [Oberon] Why macros were not implemented in oberon language? > > >From all of the ETH oberon documents I have read so far I cannot remember > there was a mention of some procedure inlining in oberon compiler. > Therefore I think there is neither manual nor automatic procedure inlining > built in oberon compiler. Some of the Oberon compilers for Intel have implemented procedure inlining as an Oberon extension. I have only seen the documentation describing its use with inline assembler routines. However, I just checked ETH PlugIn Oberon for WindowsTM / Win32 2.5 (7.2.2009) and it works well for simple normal procedures at least as well. I recall reading somewhere that the limit is a 256-byte procedure. The syntax for an inline procedure is a minus sign in front of the procedure name e.g. PROCEDURE -Double(VAR i: INTEGER); BEGIN i := i * 2 END Double; When this procedure is 'called' e.g. PROCEDURE Test*(VAR i: INTEGER); BEGIN Double(i); END Test; The resulting disassembly listing is: PROCEDURE Test 0019H: 55 PUSH EBP 001AH: 8B EC MOV EBP,ESP 001CH: 8B 5D 08 MOV EBX,8[EBP] 001FH: 66|8B 1B MOV BX,0[EBX] 0022H: 66|D1 E3 SHL/SAL BX,1 0025H: 8B 55 08 MOV EDX,8[EBP] 0028H: 66|89 1A MOV 0[EDX],BX 002BH: 8B E5 MOV ESP,EBP 002DH: 5D POP EBP 002EH: C2 04 00 RET 4 ---------------------------------------------------------------- If Double is changed to a normal procedure, the resulting disassembly listing is: PROCEDURE Test 0031H: 55 PUSH EBP 0032H: 8B EC MOV EBP,ESP 0034H: 8B 5D 08 MOV EBX,8[EBP] 0037H: 53 PUSH EBX 0038H: E8 DC FF FF FF CALL -36 (00000019H) 003DH: 8B E5 MOV ESP,EBP 003FH: 5D POP EBP 0040H: C2 04 00 RET 4 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Regards, Chris Chris Burrows CFB Software http://www.astrobe.com

1 0

Re: [Oberon] Why macros were not implemented in oberon language?
by nyaaa＠nyaaa.de 06 Jul '14

06 Jul '14

> One additional remark: Someone mentioned Ada as a language similar to > Oberon. I think Nimrod is a much better modern and powerful alternative > (with similar syntax) -- the guy(s) seems to be really smart and work > very hard on the language. The compiler has some 10k lines of code and > compiles itself in a few seconds. And it seems to support nearly all > concepts of modern languages like generics, macros, type inference, > garbage collection, parallel processing...And performance is already > close to C. But Nimrod is certainly less mature than Ada. It's specification is still unfinished and subject to change. Ada is no such moving target and commercially supported on numerous platforms. You probably should not use some pre-1.0 language implementation to write software that must not fail. And you might find certain features in one language that are not present in the other and vice versa. Then you can't generally say that one is "better". And Ada is not exactly bad. Someone recently wrote a nice article that gives a good impression of its features: http://cowlark.com/2014-04-27-ada/index.html Nimrod is an interesting project though, and its author is certainly not totally unfamiliar with Wirth's work, considering that the Nimrod compiler was bootstrapped with Free Pascal. Both Ada and Nimrod are significantly larger languages than Oberon though and each language ultimately follows a different philosophy. It is up to the user to carefully decide, which one best suits his needs.

1 0