Functional Computer from the ground up

Misters,



Let me introduce myself : Guillaume FORTAINE, French Engineer in 
Computer Science. Some people know me and some other don't. In all the 
cases, it's an honour for me to send to you this mail. I am currently 
doing researches about FPGAs engineering and Functional Programming 
Languages.


I am currently involved in the OpenFlightLinux project :

http://openflightlinux.org/

“The Open FlightLinux Project is an open source paragon that strives to 
provide sustainable technology through superior engineering, 
next-generation design concepts, and open standards.”



and I am currently thinking about the design of a true next-gen 
Operating Sytem. After many thoughts, I believe that it could be of 
interest for
everybody to have a common basis for Next-Generation Systems to promote 
research and to skip reinventing the wheel every time. As you are the 
main leaders of the most promising functional stuff research, I decided 
to contact you. Here is the starting point of my reflexion :




http://lists.tunes.org/archives/tunes/2007-July/004097.html

I have to say I'm impressed with Ubuntu Linux... it was painless to
install, and it just works. I won't be thinking about how to improve
Linux anymore, just looking forward to its successor... which just might
be Tunes. (Doubtful ;-)




One challenge remains : to obtain FAA Flight Certification, the highest 
degree of reliability in software verification at the current time ( 
EAL7 can't be tested on the "field", or in the sky ;) ! ).

http://www.ghs.com/linux/security.html

Until Linux is certified to DO-178B Level A, our soldiers, sailors, 
airmen and marines should not be asked to trust their lives with it.






Here is my proposal for a functional way of thinking computers from the 
gound up ! :)


*Hardware Design*

http://funhdl.org/wiki/doku.php/atom

Atom is a high-level hardware description language embedded in the 
functional language Haskell. Inspired by the work of Arvind and his 
students at MIT, Atom compiles conditional term rewriting systems into 
Verilog and VHDL for ASIC and FPGA synthesis.





*Programming Language*

http://www.e-pig.org/




*Processor*

http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~mfn/reduceron/index.html

The Reduceron is a processor for executing Haskell programs on FPGA with 
the aim of exploring how custom architectural features can improve the 
speed in which Haskell functions are evaluated. Being described entirely 
in Haskell (using Lava), the Reduceron also serves as an interesting 
application of functional languages to the design of complex control 
circuits such as processors.





*Operating System Design*

-Basis :

http://www.ninj4.net/kinetic/

Project Summary

Kinetic is an operating system which is written primarily in Haskell, a 
purely-functional programming language.

Kinetic is not the first operating system to be developed in Haskell; 
however, to my knowledge all previous efforts in this direction have had 
seriously limited scope (mostly academic and proof-of-concept systems). 
The long-term intention is for Kinetic to be a serious, useful operating 
system.





-Future :

http://tunes.org/

TUNES is a worldwide, loose-knit group of computer enthusiasts working 
toward a new vision of computing, based on these principles:

* All users are programmers... more or less
* Computing Freedom - open source, re-usability & extendability
* Integration & Consolidation of programming languages & tools
* High-level programming: Automate what can be automated

Our work is focused on programming language design, compiler techniques, 
development tools, and user interfaces.




I look forward to your answer,

Best Regards,

Guillaume FORTAINE

--
"I consider life itself instinct for growth, for durability, for accumulation of 
forces, for power : where the will to power is lacking there is decline"

Friedrich Nietzsche


"Knowledge is Power."

Sir Francis Bacon