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Comment by LightMachine

2 years ago

Yes, starting next week or so! We'll be looking for engineers that have skills relevant to our projects, including compilers, low-level assembly optimization, functional programming, type theory, parallel computing, and so on. Right now, we're quite busy with incorporation and bureaucracy, but you should see job postings in our to-be-released landing page (higherorderco.com) soon. Meanwhile, I answer DMs on Twitter (@VictorTaelin) and Discord (VictorTaelin#2253).

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LightMachine

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nerpderp82  2 years ago

What are your thoughts around WebAssembly, Typed Assembly [1] and will you be using BlueSpec [2] to implement these ideas in hardware?

[1] https://www.semanticscholar.org/search?q=typed%20assembly%20...

namely, Greg Morrisett and Neal Glew's work

https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/J.-G.-Morrisett/14364...

https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/MorrisettGreg/1643921... (semantic scholar incorrectly thinks there are two Greg Morrisetts)

https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/Neal-Glew/1710858

[2] https://github.com/B-Lang-org/bsc

  • LightMachine  2 years ago

    I love WASM - who doesn't? Maintaining a WASM target was included on HOC's current fundraise, and is essential to our JIT plans. I don't know much about typed assembly, but I guess it would enable optimizations that aren't possible without types, as well as increased safety - although I wonder if that's relevant, if the source language is already typed?

    In general though, I think we should move away from procedural instructions towards "interactional" instructions. HVM's AST can be seen as an assembly language with high-level instructions like LAM-APP (lambda application) and FUN-CTR (pattern-matching), and that's possible precisely because beta reduction is O(1) on interaction nets. A hardware with HVM's interactional instructions could make let us break out of the Von Neumann bottleneck and make processors much faster. Here is a table of HVM's core instructions:

        .-----------------------------------------------------.
    | Opcode    | Effect                          | Cost  |
    |-----------|---------------------------------|-------|
    | APP-LAM   | applies a lambda                | 2     |
    | APP-SUP   | applies a superposition         | 4     |
    | OP2-NUM   | operates on a number            | 2     |
    | OP2-SUP   | operates on a superposition     | 4     |
    | FUN-CTR   | pattern-matches a constructor   | 2 + M |
    | FUN-SUP   | pattern-matches a superposition | 2 + A |
    | DUP-LAM   | clones a lambda                 | 4     |
    | DUP-NUM   | clones a number                 | 2     |
    | DUP-CTR   | clones a constructor            | 2 + A |
    | DUP-SUP-0 | clones a superposition          | 4     |
    | DUP-SUP-1 | undoes a superposition          | 2     |
    | DUP-ERA   | clones an erasure               | 2     |
    |-----------------------------------------------------|

    I think BlueSpec is impressive and a good direction in the (arguably messy) hardware language domain. It is likely that we'll consider using it in our research and projects.

    • sroussey  2 years ago

      The slowing of Moore’s Law was going to eventually lead to the loosening of the stranglehold that Von Nuemann machine design has on the industry. I’m glad to see things like this!

johntitorvm  2 years ago

Will be there jobs for early-career engineers? I have skills in Rust and a lot of interest in working on this project, but I only have one year of experience