7 May
2007
7 May
'07
8:13 p.m.
It was thus said that the Great Richard A. Cini once stated:
All:
I got an unusual phone call this evening from a doctor on Long Island
who is doing theoretical biological research that, he hopes, will have a
commercial application. Without going into much detail (because it was like
drinking from a fire hose and I can't remember it all), basically he is
looking to emulate some biological processes in software. He believes that
the "instructions" that code for the biological processes are based on 6-bit
instructions (or multiples thereof), so he's looking for someone with that
kind of architectural background. A PDP-8 has 12-bit instructions and I
think the PDP-9 and 15 used 18-bit words. I'm not knowledgeable about any of
the other minicomputer architectures to guess word size, but anything that's
a low multiple of 6-bits should work for his purposes.
If anyone's willing to have a conversation with this person, please
contact me off list and I'll pass on his contact information.
What an odd request. I would think that you could emulate such a device
on just about any CPU and his best bet would be to find anyone that can code
assembly (or that can write an emulator for his six-bit CPU).
I don't see how a six-bit hardware architecture (if such a beast actually
exists) will have a one-to-one mapping to a six-bit biological architecture.
Heck, I would expect an 8-bit CPU to be decent for this, as that gives you
two additional bits for debugging or tracking of some kind.
Heck, it sounds kind of fun (assembly experience: 6809, 8088, some 80386,
68000, MIPS, some VAX, can recognize 8080, Z80 and 6502).
-spc (Even wrote my own Forth-like langauge ... )