ASTROCHIP2.1 13.1.2010


AstroChip2.1 is a program for describing and simulating computer chips. There is a short introduction about using and connecting and-, or- or inv-gates or PLAs in the zip-archive of the download. The version downloadable above uses a deprecated JAVA API. There is a version, which doesn't use a deprecated JAVA API, in the zip-archive APPLICATIONS SWING. The zip-archive (APPLICATIONS SWING) includes a version, which is much faster on Multi-Core devices (AstroChip2.3). But if a chip can't be simulated (seems to work endless, but is small enough), you should use AstroChip2.1. Then it is possible, that there was a deadlock in the parallel computing part of AstroChip2.3. You define logical gates in AstroChip2.1 and connect them with CONNECT-lists. You can also define CONSTANT bit values and connect them to the input of gates to test chips. If you arrange logical code as a group (MODULE), you can reuse it. The chip is simulated cycle by cycle. The BIT values in the main-MODULE are printed in the console after every cycle. You can mark other elements for output in the console after every cycle in AstroChip2.1 or AstroChip2.3. Therefore you must open the MODULE-browser. There is a gaming console (XPROVGAREDUCED2.12) written in AstroChip2.1. The CPU of it is defined as AstroChip-definition and available as a free download. It takes about 30 seconds to compute one cycle on a 3GHZ-PC. The parallel computation showed errors.

This (AstroChip2.1) is an accelerated version of AstroChip2. The build action is slightly slower but one cycle is faster if long CONNECT lists are used. Do not expect more than 50% acceleration. The visibility of output signals of modules did not work in the ModuleBrowser of AstroChip2. This is corrected in this version.

AstroChip 2 hat deutlich erweiterte Fehleranalyse-Features. Objekte jeder Art, deren Inputs nicht angeschlossen sind, werden automatisch gefunden. Zyklen im MODULE-Baum, die unendliche Rekursionen erzeugen, werden ebenfalls festgestellt. Zusätzlich ermöglicht der ModuleBrowser das Markieren von Objekten, so dass ihre Signalwerte nach jedem Zyklus in der Konsole stehen.