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ICBD: static type inference and compilation for Python
I’ve just released the source code to icbd, which is the predecessor to Pyston. The project is dead now (though the code works and could be picked up by anyone sufficiently interested), but I thought it might be of interest. (Also, it runs slower in PyPy than in CPython, so I wanted to give it…
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Pyston FAQ
This is the first time I’ve ever gotten enough questions about something to put together something that can honestly be called an FAQ and not a What-I-Think-You-Might-Want-To-Know; here are some questions that seem to come up often: Why does Pyston target Python 2.7? Pyston is initially targeting Python 2.7 because that’s what Dropbox uses…
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First FPGA board: it’s all about JTAG
Well, I finally sort-of accomplished one of my original goals: designing and building a custom FPGA board. The reason it took a while, and somewhat separately also the reason I can’t use it very much, are both due to JTAG issues. Here’s a picture in all its low-res glory: Without getting too much into the…
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BGA update: first successes!
As the title suggests, I successfully reflowed my first BGA chips today. I followed the seemingly-easy steps from the last post, and the board correctly enumerated! In a decent bit of thinking ahead, I not only connected the JTAG pins to the header, but I also paired up all CPLD IOs so that I could…
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BGA update: some good news, mostly bad
I blogged a couple times about how I was attempting to do BGA soldering at home using my toaster oven. The last post ended with me being stumped, so I create a few new boards: one with 3.3V JTAG circuitry in case that the previous 1.8V JTAG was the issue — while I had designed my…
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Pyston: xrange() example
I’ve finally been able to talk about what I’ve been up to at Dropbox: Pyston, a new JIT for Python! You can check out the main announcement here, or the code here. In this post I wanted to go into more detail about a specific example of something that Pyston can handle: for loops. It…
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Troubles of using GNU Make
There seem to be lots of posts these days about people “discovering” how using build process automation can be a good thing. I’ve always felt like the proliferation of new build tools is largely a result of peoples’ excitement at discovering something new; I’ve always used GNU Make and have always loved it. As I…
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More BGA testing
In my previous post I talked about my first attempts at some BGA soldering. I ran through all three of my test chips, and ordered some more; they came in recently, so a took another crack at it. I went back to using liquid flux, since I find it easier to use (the felt-tip flux…
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First trials with BGA parts
So I decided to try my hand at BGA reflow; this is something I’ve wanted to do for awhile, and recently I read about some people having success with it so I decided to give it a shot. I’m trying to start moving up the high-speed ladder to things like larger FPGAs, DRAM, or flash…
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Followup: picking an ARM chip
In my last post I talked a little about the process of picking an ARM microcontroller to start using. After doing some more research, I’ve decided for now to start using the STM32 line of chips. I don’t really know how it stands on the technical merits vs the other similar lines; the thing I’m…
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