[Oberon] Accessibility of FPGA configuration to V5 system.

[peter at easthope.ca]

From:	peter at easthope.ca peter at easthope.ca Mon Aug 30 17:39:15 CEST 2021
> Many biologists tend to a very descriptive approach to their work.
> Compared to the mathematical and mechanistic concepts of engineers, 
> computer scientists and physicists.  

Of course the mechanistic approach us just as valid for a biological 
system as for a bridge.  The difficulty with a biological system is 
the complexity.  Illustrated here.
https://www.janelia.org/news/unveiling-the-biggest-and-most-detailed-map-of-the-fly-brain-yet
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.21.911859v1
Note the large Zeiss microscopes working for more than a year to 
complete the mapping.

The brain of a fruit fly has about 100 k neurons.  Comparable to the 
LUT in a contemporary FPGA. Striking that the fly brain is 
approximately the size of a poppy seed while a FPGA board is 
10^5 - 10^7 times that volume.

From:	"Skulski, Wojciech" <skulski at pas.rochester.edu> 
Date:	Mon, 30 Aug 2021 14:47:14 +0000 
> I am not sure how all this is related to the V5 system configuration.

Not particularly related but comparison interested me. The fly 
successfully implements aroma detection, vision, navigation, flight, 
ambulation, ingestion, reproduction and other activities.  Likely some 
activities are learned rather than innate. The configuration of 
the fly nervous system is adjusted as the fly develops. In comparison, 
configuration of current FPGA machines is not changed while software 
runs.  In fact the fly doesn't separate logic, volatile memory and 
persistent memory. Optical sensors (eyes) and aroma sensors (chemical 
receptors) are distinguishable fairly easily.

Regards,                           ... P.L.


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