

larwe wrote:
>
>Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com/> wrote:
>
>> >1. The smallest known microcontroller has no intrinsic mass or volume.
>> >It is a /soft/ micro, as might be programmed into an FPGA.
>
>> The argument from information theory that I wrote about sets a
>> lower bound for the volume of a soft micro.  It is not zero.
>
>Aha! Gotcha. Try this thought experiment.
>
>1. Design a binary-encodable language that can define a
>microcontroller's structure and behavior.
>
>2. Observe an infinite number of RNGs for a near-infinite bitstream.
>
>Some of your RNGs will have spat out "microcontroller" definitions
>during the observation period. Some of them will not. Some of them
>will even have spat out descriptions of state transitions
>corresponding to an /executing/ microcontroller.
>
>Are you telling me that the mass or volume of the lucky RNGs is now
>larger than the unlucky RNGs?

This being Usenet and me seeing no obvious flaw in your reasoning,
is it OK if I just call you a Nazi?  Hitler would have loved the
argument above.  :)

Guy Macon
<http://www.guymacon.com/>

Spehro Pefhany wrote:
>
>the renowned Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com/> wrote:
>>
>>larwe wrote:
>>
>>>Since we're apparently in training for next April already,
>>
>>Ya think? <grin>
>>
>>>let me point out two things:
>>>
>>>1. The smallest known microcontroller has no intrinsic mass or volume.
>>>It is a /soft/ micro, as might be programmed into an FPGA.
>>
>>How many FPGA's can dance on the head of a pin? :)
>
>Very few FPGAs can dance at all. That's why their BGA packages have
>such tiny balls. 

You are the wind beneath my wings.  :)

-------------------------------------------------------

<total change of topic -- or rather change of off-topic>

Have you ever noticed that, when doing a Google Groups search,
the #$%*! search engine puts posts with "Guy Macon" in the subject
line at the top?  Such posts tend to be by flamers who write things
like "Guy Macon is a binary plantigrade."  Someone searching Google
Groups sees those posts on the top, and the (hopefuly high-quality)
posts *by* Guy Macon are buried under the flames.  The solution?
First, write a somewhat humorous post with "Guy Macon" in the title.
Second, somewere a few posts down in the thread, add a post that 
uses the term Guy Macon in several spots.  Result: the thread with
the humor goes to the top of he search results, employers see it and
decide to hire such a <cough> Fun Guy (fungi? YUCK!), members of 
the opposite sex (who always *say* that the most important atribute 
in a man is the ability to make them laugh -- bt I think its money)
desire him, nad he, having more money and happiness and a better 
mood, creates better embedded systems.

Nice post but it needs more Guy Macon.  add a Guy Macon and then 
another Guy Macon and the search engine will see More Guy Macon
inside sentences (they reject bare Guy Macon lists with Guy Macon
repeated and no words in between) thus raising the Guy macon factor
even farther.  -Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com/>

On Jun 10, 7:30 am, Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com/> wrote:

> >1. The smallest known microcontroller has no intrinsic mass or volume.
> >It is a /soft/ micro, as might be programmed into an FPGA.

> The argument from information theory that I wrote about sets a
> lower bound for the volume of a soft micro.  It is not zero.

Aha! Gotcha. Try this thought experiment.

1. Design a binary-encodable language that can define a
microcontroller's structure and behavior.

2. Observe an infinite number of RNGs for a near-infinite bitstream.

Some of your RNGs will have spat out "microcontroller" definitions
during the observation period. Some of them will not. Some of them
will even have spat out descriptions of state transitions
corresponding to an /executing/ microcontroller.

Are you telling me that the mass or volume of the lucky RNGs is now
larger than the unlucky RNGs?

On Sun, 10 Jun 2007 11:30:15 +0000, the renowned Guy Macon
<http://www.guymacon.com/> wrote:

>
>
>
>larwe wrote:
>
>>Since we're apparently in training for next April already,
>
>Ya think? <grin>
>
>>let me point out two things:
>>
>>1. The smallest known microcontroller has no intrinsic mass or volume.
>>It is a /soft/ micro, as might be programmed into an FPGA.
>
>How many FPGA's can dance on the head of a pin? :)

Very few FPGAs can dance at all. That's why their BGA packages have
such tiny balls. 


Best regards, 
Spehro Pefhany
-- 
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

larwe wrote:

>Since we're apparently in training for next April already,

Ya think? <grin>

>let me point out two things:
>
>1. The smallest known microcontroller has no intrinsic mass or volume.
>It is a /soft/ micro, as might be programmed into an FPGA.

How many FPGA's can dance on the head of a pin? :)

The argument from information theory that I wrote about sets a 
lower bound for the volume of a soft micro.  It is not zero.
Even using Newtonian arguments, a soft micro i an FPGA must 
contain at least one electron or other subatomic paticle and 
at least two locations for same.  Thus the lower bound is 
twice the size of an electron -- cnsiderably larger than 
your claimed zero size. 

>The micro itself is information, and the mass and volume is 
>defined by the implementation, which may be infinitely variable 
>(hydraulic relays down to sub-micron-sized gates).

I contend that a micro must have some sort of I/O.  With today's
technology, sthe smallest I/O connection is a wirebond pad.
Three are the usual minmum (I/O pin plus power and return). 
Hydraulic and mechanical I/O is much larger.  Perhaps optical
I/O might be smaller though; depends on how small one can make 
a LED or laser diode on a chip -- but that still leaves two pads 
for power and return.

>2. The existence of angels is predicated on the belief in a religion,

As I ponted out, when the question was first asked, many questions
of science were framed using the language of theology.  The two
modern scientists I quited simply caried on the analogy, as did I.
Would you assume that discussing Maxwell' Demon  is predicated 
on the belief in a religion?

>and not all religions (nor all believers in a particular religion)
>define them the same way. I therefore postulate that angels obey
>similar rules to the soft microcontroller; the observed mass and
>volume depend on the observer.

The question is not one of observed mass and volume but rather 
minimum possible volume of *anything* according to the laws of 
physics and thus whether location is quantum.

It's nice to see that someone else takes these questions 
as <cough> seriously as I do...  :)

Guy Macon
<http://www.guymacon.com/>

On Jun 10, 6:41 am, Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com/> wrote:

> It happens that I am well-qualified for examining this, having
> done extensive work with the smallest known microcontrollers;
> bare dies with wire bonding that is covered with blobs of epoxy.

Dear me no. Since we're apparently in training for next April already,
let me point out two things:

1. The smallest known microcontroller has no intrinsic mass or volume.
It is a /soft/ micro, as might be programmed into an FPGA. The micro
itself is information, and the mass and volume is defined by the
implementation, which may be infinitely variable (hydraulic relays
down to sub-micron-sized gates).

2. The existence of angels is predicated on the belief in a religion,
and not all religions (nor all believers in a particular religion)
define them the same way. I therefore postulate that angels obey
similar rules to the soft microcontroller; the observed mass and
volume depend on the observer.

Robert Adsett wrote:

>BTW the distinction I always heard between microcontroller and 
>microprocessor was the microcontroller did not have an external bus and 
>the microprocessor did.

That would make an 8051 a microprocessor. as a rough guide to
usage, Google has it's advantages:

 19,200 hits for "8051 microprocessor".

116,000 hits for "8051 microcontroller"

So "8051 microcontroller" is six times more common than
"8051 microprocessor"

>joshc says...
>
>> I have always liked to distinguish a microprocessor from a
>> microcontroller based on whether or not there are integrated
>> peripherals on the same chip or just a CPU. There are some companies
>> that seem to refer to what I traditionally thought of as
>> microcontrollers by the term du jour, System-on-a-Chip. Are these two
>> terms synonymous? Furthermore, sometimes these SOCs are referred to in
>> the same documentation as processors. Isn't this a bit imprecise, and
>> wouldn't calling them microcontrollers be better since they are a
>> processor + a bunch of integrated peripherals and memories?
>
>I think you are expecting a precision in the language that just isn't 
>there.  All definitions three terms have as much to do with marketing as 
>real distinctions, and the distinctions were not that cut and dried to 
>begin with.
>
>Although I do expect a spate of definitions to pop up with a theological 
>discussion on how many micros can dance on the head of a pin now ;)

First of all, the original question that you allude to is "how many 
angels can stand on the point of a pin", not "how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin" and the dispute was between "an infinite
number" and "an arbitrarily large but finite number."  

Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) the main architect of Roman Catholic 
theology, spent much of his life exploring this question.  He reasoned
that it is impossible for two distinct causes to each be the immediate 
cause of one and the same thing.  Following the standard methods and
intellectual climate of his time, he framed such scientific and 
mathematical questions in religious terms and chose an angel as a 
good example of such a cause.  His argument was that if two angels
occupy the same space the question of which one is the cause of an
event is indeterminate.  This can be seen as an early attempt to 
deduce the Pauli exclusion principle.

Aquinas could not not place an upper bound on the density of angels 
in a small area, because the size of an angel was undefined and 
could be arbitrarily small.

In 1995 by Dr. Phil Schewe, spokesman for the American Institute 
of Physics, revisited this problem.  He chose his smallest possible 
angelic size from the superstring theory that space is not infinitely 
divisible and thus the smallest possible angel is at least 10 to 
the -35 meters in size.

He chose his smallest possible pin point as being the tip of the 
an IBM scanning tunneling microscope which has a tip that tapers 
down to a single atom. This reduced the calculation to a simple
multiplication problem which I will leave as an exercise for the 
student.

Schewe, however, assumed without questioning that Thomas Aquinas'
non-overlap theory was correct.  Anders Sandberg of the Royal 
Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden questioned this assumption.
He argued that, since angels can be presumed to obey quantum rules 
when packed at quantum gravity densities, the uncertainty principle 
will cause their wave functions to overlap significantly even if 
there is a strong degeneracy pressure.  Without the non-overlap 
assumption Schewe's approach cannot derive an upper bound.

Sandberg then turned to information theory for a solution.
First, he assumed massless angels (if the angels have mass, the 
point of the pin will collapse into a black hole) containing at 
least one bit of information: fallen/not fallen.  Assuming a
pin point that is one iron atom, he use the Bekenstein bound
on information to calculate an upper bound on pinpoint angel 
density of 2.448 times 10 to the -5 angels, far below the Schewe 
bound. He also calculated friction effects, but these can be 
ignored because he incorrectly had the angels dancing instead 
of standing. My own contribution to this was to observe that 
it takes at least two locations per angel for them to dance.  
If they are packed at maximum density, they can't move.  Also 
there are angular momentum issues if they dance the twist.

Given the extensive research already done on the question of 
how many angels can stand on the point of a pin, I was heartened 
to see you ask how many micros can dance on the head of a pin.
It happens that I am well-qualified for examining this, having 
done extensive work with the smallest known microcontrollers;
bare dies with wire bonding that is covered with blobs of epoxy.

On would think that the lower limit would be set by complexity 
and feature size, but at the low end the wire bond pads take
up most of the room.  Assuming a one millimeter pin head and
a dance caused by Brownian motion, and assuming a micro that
is optimized for minimum size, I estimate that seven micros
in a hexagonal array can dance in the head of a pin.  Future
advances in wire-bonding technology may improve this figure.

I hope this helps.

-- 
Guy Macon
<http://www.guymacon.com/>