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mikewarot
Bitgrid
Pascal2023–2024
mikewarot / Bitgrid

Bitgrid

Bitgrid - a new model of computation

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2Distinct people
42Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
23GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

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What it is

Bitgrid - a new model of computation

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

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Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 2:04:58 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by month42 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2023-06-17 03:26:35 UTC to 2024-12-27 16:26:26 UTC.

02462023-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 commentsJun 20232023-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2023-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2023-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2023-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 0 submissions, 6 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2024-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2024-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 commentsMar 20242024-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2024-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 1 submissions, 4 comments2024-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2024-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2024-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2024-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 commentsDec 2024

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
Jun 20232023-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-07-01 00:00:00 UTC303
Jul 20232023-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20232023-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-09-01 00:00:00 UTC404
Sep 20232023-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-10-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Oct 20232023-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-11-01 00:00:00 UTC505
Nov 20232023-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-12-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Dec 20232023-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC606
Jan 20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-02-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Feb 20242024-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-03-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Mar 20242024-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-04-01 00:00:00 UTC303
Apr 20242024-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-05-01 00:00:00 UTC000
May 20242024-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-06-01 00:00:00 UTC202
Jun 20242024-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-07-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jul 20242024-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-08-01 00:00:00 UTC514
Aug 20242024-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-09-01 00:00:00 UTC404
Sep 20242024-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-10-01 00:00:00 UTC202
Oct 20242024-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-11-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Nov 20242024-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-12-01 00:00:00 UTC303
Dec 20242024-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202

What Hacker News says

3 sources
mikewarot·Nov 19, 2024
I'm keeping myself busy working on my BitGrid architecture, I aim to route around the 80 years of technical debt started by John von Neumann. One of his first casualties was ENIAC, which was slowed down by about 80% when it was "improved"[1] BitGrid[2] is a green field approach, and I need an accountability buddy to keep me focused. Replacing everything is hard. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC#Improvements [2] https://github.com/mikewarot/Bitgrid
In Ask HN: What projects are you going to work on if no need to work?
mikewarot·Nov 12, 2024
If you've read the article, and thought to yourself... I wonder what it was like back then, and if there might be some other direction it could have gone, oh boy do I have a story (and opportunity) for you! It's my birthday today(61)... I'm up early to get a tooth pulled, and I read this wonderful story, and all I have is a tangent I hope some of you think is interesting. It would be nice if someone who isn't brain-foggy could run with the idea and make the Billion dollars or so I think can be wrung out of it. You get a bowl of spaghetti, that could contain the key to Petaflops, secure computing, and a new universal solvent of computing like the Turing machine, as an instructional model. The BitGrid is an FPGA without all the fancy routing hardware, that being replace with a grid of latches... if fact, the whole chip would consist almost
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entirely of D flip-flops and 16:1 multiplexers. (I lack the funds to do a TinyTapeout, but started going there should the money appear) All the computation happens in cells that are 4 bit in, 4 bit out Look up tables. (Mostly so signals can cross without XOR tricks, etc) For the times you need a chunk of RAM, the closest I got is using one of the tables as a 16 bit wide shift register, which I've decided to call isolinear memory[6] You can try the online React emulator I'm still working on [1], and see the source[2]. Or the older one I wrote in Pascal, that's MUCH faster[3]. There's a writeup from someone else about it as an Esoteric Language[4]. I've even written a blog about it over the years.[5] It's all out in public, for decades up to the present... so it should be easy to contest any patents, and keep it fun. I'm sorry it's all a big incoherent mess.... completely replacing an architecture is freaking hard, especially when confronted with 79 years of optimization in another direction. I do think it's possible to target it with LLVM, if you're feeling frisky. [1] https://mikewarot.github.io/bitgrid-react-app/ [2] https://github.com/mikewarot/bitgrid-react-app [3] https://github.com/mikewarot/Bitgrid [4] https://esolangs.org/wiki/Bitgrid [5] https://bitgrid.blogspot.com/ [6] https://bitgrid.blogspot.com/2024/09/bitgrid-and-isolinear-m...
In The Soul of an Old Machine: Revisiting the Timeless von Neumann Architecture
mikewarot·Nov 8, 2024
Ugh.... similar to BitGrid[1] (my own hobby horse), but not. I imagine bits marching in parallel across a grid in the ultimate simplification of an FPGA. It's an idea that either has supreme utility (Petaflops for the masses), or doesn't... it's all down to how much energy a DFF takes on an ASIC. (This is a pair of numbers I've been trying to find forever... static power, and energy to load a bit) Oh... and the programming model, nobody likes plopping logic down on a grid, they try to abstract it away as fast as possible. I don't have sufficient focus to be able to do that bit. [edit] Somewhere in exploring this, I came across Von Neumann cellular automaton[2] and Nobili cellular automata[3], which I've not encountered, despite being interested similar ideas for decades. It's frustrating just how little discoverability there is in this p
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ortion of computer science. Of course both share the same insane foundation: The set of FSAs define a cell space of infinite size. All FSAs are identical in terms of state-transition function, or rule-set. It's that one "simplification" that relegates them to the domain of code golf. [1] https://github.com/mikewarot/Bitgrid [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_cellular_automaton [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobili_cellular_automata pps: If anyone wants to run with the idea of a BitGrid, I'd appreciate it
In Λ-2D: An Exploration of Drawing as Programming Language

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