I want to play with making hardware targeting a SLATE-based environment.

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr]

Well, given that Slate is currently written in Common Lisp I would 
expect that a Lisp Machine would be the ideal hardware for it ;-)

Thanks, Brian, for mentioning my projects. While the current language 
implementations use simple dispatch for message sends, I would like 
very much to figure out an efficient ways to do multi-dispatching in 
order to bring the language closer to Slate.

Since I have several different projects in various stages of 
development, it might be interesting to make a little list:

- Oliver: a very simple 16 bit processor which looks like "Forth chip 
meets Mushroom". The application is a terminal for truck drivers. It 
runs at 57MHz and the language is very limited, but the hardware should 
cost less than $50.

- Tachyon: a four bus MOVE processor with 16 threads and hardware 
support for bytecode-to-MOVE "code morphing". Loop coprocessors speed 
up inner loops (specially in multimedia code). The external synchronous 
SRAM (for the caches) is the limiting factor for performance, so the 
clock speed should be around 133MHz. This has been replaced with the 
next design, but could still be an interesting option for some people 
(think of it as a much improved Crusoe).

- Plurion: has one larger processor capable of bytecode-to-bytecode 
optimization and several smaller processors similar to Oliver. The 
application is a modular computer for students with desktop and tablet 
configurations. An entry-level desktop (without a monitor) should cost 
around $100. It is hard to guess the operating frequency right now, but 
200MHz might be possible.

- RNA: doesn't have a processor or memory but hundreds of thousands of 
"cells" which can handle messages and store an object's "slot". It 
doesn't have a clock.

The first three were created for implementation using FPGAs while RNA 
must be implemented as a custom chip using very modern technology (or 
wafer scale integration). Oliver and Plurion are stack based while 
Tachyon is register based.

-- Jecel