Control Processor

Discuss the technical details of an "open source" community-driven design of a polywell reactor.

Moderators: tonybarry, MSimon

MSimon
Posts: 14334
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2007 7:37 pm
Location: Rockford, Illinois
Contact:

Post by MSimon »

Indrek,

If we can anticipate problems. (like the need for really high speed processing) we can design it in from the get go.

Esp if such processors are cheaper. smaller, faster, and lower power.

Good management anticipates problems and eliminates them before hand.

A master at control design once told me many, many moons ago that the best way to design a new system is to use a processor 10X as fast as your anticipated needs.

This allows for slop in initial design and gives the option of tightening things up if you really need the extra horse power. It also means the addition of debug code (if necessary) will not cripple the system.

TallDave
Posts: 3140
Joined: Wed Jul 25, 2007 7:12 pm
Contact:

Post by TallDave »

Heh, interesting thread. I'm still noobish enough that I had to look up PID loops and ENOB. TGFWikipedia!

Of course, I mostly work in a 4GL embedded database language, so all my day-to-day problems are in a totally different frame of reference, but I have enjoyed being able to do things in Progress in minutes that take weeks in non-4GLs. And when, in the first week after a company hires you, you optimize a business-critical query so that it runs in 5 minutes instead of 10 hours, their initial awe never quite fades away entirely.

BTW, I ordered the Starting Forth book off Amazon. (TGFA!) I don't read books on screens either.

http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Forth-In ... 021&sr=8-2

Still 10 left.

Nanos
Posts: 363
Joined: Thu Jul 05, 2007 8:57 pm
Location: Treasure Island

Post by Nanos »

I just must tell you of one of the amusing stories I have about working in the government. They had a list of lost items (now measuring 100,000+..) and every year they would spend a couple of weeks with everyone in the department looking for them, they'd print out the list, cut each item out with a pair of scissors and then on tables spend half a day sorting them all out into little piles..

I mentioned if they took their word.doc and stuck it into a spreadsheet, they could at the click of a button, sort everything into order without all that paper and scissors lark!

Mind you, it took 2 years before they'd let me solve a printing problem which just needed a driver replacement, but not working in IT I didn't have high enough privilages to do it myself. (The problem was 1% of printed orders never got printed, even though the application said they was... and with 3 million orders per year you can imagine the level of chaos on a daily basis from all this extra unecessary work..)

MSimon
Posts: 14334
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2007 7:37 pm
Location: Rockford, Illinois
Contact:

Post by MSimon »

I can get you guys up to speed on controls.

Just ask questions as I'm short of time so I can't write a tutorial.

I have a very short FORTH tutorial (4 - 6 pages) I should dig up and post.

Maybe later today.

Simon

Post Reply