William Wong
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ED Online ID #13329 |
August 21, 2006
On the plus side, the Propeller has a really neat architecture. It is novel but extremely powerful. It will take some imagination to use the architecture effectively but it offers a platform that is unmatched at this time.
One interesting aspect of the architecture is that it is quite possible to have a system that is only running cog code. Well, actually that is always the case but it is possible to not be running the Spin interpreter while all the other cogs are active. In this case an application will have some Spin code to setup the system but it may then simply continue in a steady state running just high performance cog code that is part of the application. Very interesting.
The tools are free and the hardware is inexpensive. This definitely makes it easy to evaluate. The power advantages should appeal to portable device developers.
Ready For Prime Time Parallax has some solid hardware but its software tools could use some work. This poses some interesting challenges for developers that plan to deploy a Propeller-based application. As with any processor, the applications that work well with the chip varies and there should be some very interesting applications for the Propeller. It will take developers that can think outside the current single processor or SMP (symmetrical multiprocessor) box in addition to ones that can also think at two levels (cog and Spin).
Unlike most microcontroller solutions, it is very easy to throw more compute power at a problem. Most other platforms require you to carefully allocate processing resources. On the other hand, the memory limitations and architecture of the Propeller are quite different. Still, it is not as if Parallax has an architecture that is totally unique. IBM’s Cell processor has a similar, although larger, multicore architecture that game designers will have to get used to if they plan on targeting the Sony Playstation 3.
For now, I think the Propeller is a neat thing to experiment with. I look forward to improvements in the IDE and in debugging but for designers willing to take off right now the Propeller is worth a spin. There are many control oriented problems that can be solved using the power of the Propeller.
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