Introduction
Our documentation is layered and modularized for accessibility. Product Briefs provide concise summaries of topics covered completely in Data Books. For guidance in using our products, Application Briefs treat topics suitable for exposition in a single page format while Application Notes expose larger topics. Our White Papers and other Supplemental Data provide less formal materials for your information and convenience.
The Index of Downloads is the comprehensive index with links to all of our published documentation and software. This is supplemented by our Customer Support Central page where the most up-to-date technical information may be found. The arrayForth Institute is an online school supplementing the downloadable documents and software in a tutorial format. Please use these as your primary references.
For your convenience in browsing our materials, this page as well as Featured App Notes introduce highlights only. Please do not stop with them; much more is offered in the primary references noted above.
Common Architecture
Read this first — it explains the technical foundations of our entire family of chips, the advantages of using them as designed, and other general information applicable to all our products.
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Energy Management Energy Tutorial Defines terms, discusses the technical methods we use to conserve energy, links to a demonstration of the measurable cost of a single minimal inverter using actual layout and simulation. A work in progress. GA_Energy_Conservation In this paper we will examine the ways in which the GreenArray chips minimize energy consumption for tasks ranging from high speed parallel processing to execution of large bodies of code written in high-level languages such as C, using examples of the manifold execution models that may be supported by the GreenArray chips. Comparison of GA chips with Texas Instruments® MSP430 This paper compares the energy consumption of our chips with that of a chip family that is considered to be a micropowered controller suitable for use in energy harvesting systems. Additional Papers GA_ADC_Noise_Immunity This note briefly addresses inherent noise amelioration in the current Analog to Digital Converter and explains why external, analog antialiasing filters may be unnecessary in your application. Boot Protocols Documents the several boot protocols defined for GreenArrays chips. |
arrayForth® 3 Integrated, Multilevel Development Software
arrayForth 3 is a complete, interactive software development and debugging environment for GreenArrays Chips. It includes assembler/compiler, example source code including all ROM on each chip, a full software-level simulator for each chip (to be released soon), and an Interactive Development Environment for use with real chips. The latest release is configured by default for the EVB002 Evaluation Board, for which Virtual Machine support and other tools are included. Follow this link to arrayForth Software Support for documentation and for fully functional downloadable software provided free of charge.
arrayForth 3 includes two distinct develoment environments: One running on saneFORTH/x86 that can program target hardware using GA144 chips, and can run large-memory operations such as software simulation; and another, running on polyFORTH®/GA144 on an evaluation board or equivalent, which can also program the chips at multiple levels while providing unprecedentedly intimate and high bandwidth communication to the software being developed (because it is running on the same hardware with port communication capability.)
F18A Technology
Read this section for details about the F18A technology on which chips currently in production are based. The Technology Reference book contains the information needed to program the computers and I/O mechanisms, filling the role of a traditional "CPU manual".
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Production Technology Reference Computer Brief
Last updated 4/12/2011. |
Chips using F18A Technology
Read this section for configurations and other details, such as pin-outs, ROM content and electrical characteristics, of particular chips that use the technology described above. The complete manual for the G144 consists of two volumes: The F18A Data Book and the G144A12 Data Book.
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GA144 Production Chip Information Preliminary Data Book
Last updated 7/05/2011. Application Notes Highlights of selected G144A12 Application Notes Early Prototype Chip Information Prototype Chip Brief Last updated 5/03/2010. |
Historical Video Supplements
These brief video segments were made on 25 September 2010, 30 days before the G144A12 was taped out, while the team was gathered in Incline Village and our final changes and improvements were being made and verified. As a result, they do not reflect the tool development of the next 10 years, so they are somewhat dated. We include these videos here for historical perspective, and also to show our respect for Jeff Fox who lived only another seven months after recording his video below. For instructional videos on the F18A computers, please see the arrayForth Institute.
"Welcome Message" by Chuck Moore. Chuck's perspective on our chips, outdated only in terms of software offerings.
"I've Downloaded arrayForth; What do I do next?" with Greg Bailey. Advice for users of GreenArrays' initial, colorForth-based development tools in September 2010
"Introducing the arrayForth Interpreter and Keyboard" with Jeff Fox. Jeff discusses the colorForth system used in 2010 GreenArrays software
"Introducing softsim for the GA144" with Charley Shattuck. Charley introduces the old arrayForth software (instruction-level) simulator for the G144A12 chip.