by Humanoido

• The World's First Living Stamp Supercomputer!
• The supercomputer that has become a life form
• How to Build a Parallax Stamp SEED Supercomputer
• Self Evolving Enumerating Deterministic Basic Stamp Supercomputer
• A New Evolution in Stamp Supercomputer design

The Stamp SEED Supercomputer is a new concept. This is a ten core, nine month project, with the first AI Stamp software to fit into 256 bytes eeprom - self determinate, evolving, enumerating, dreaming, poetic, noisy, talkative, and downright friendly. It runs on only one program that self evolves differently in each of the ten computers. It's evolutionary - it's revolutionary!

SEED is a new evolution in Basic Stamp supercomputers and supercomputing software, changing the way we think about Stamp collectives.

The new Stamp supercomputer version is a smaller, lighter, stand-alone, lite BS1 version of the original Basic Stamp Supercomputer (BSS). Its a homemade ten-core collective. Its features include a new Skyscraper design, easy construction, extremely low power consumption, ultra neat wiring, and very low cost. Of course, it's ten times more than a single Stamp and has the SEED software.

The Stamp SEED supercomputer is born at a time when the Parallax Basic Stamp hobby supercomputers are becoming popular due to the simple way to construct these units with one wire. Programming is in a simple but powerful language (PBASIC). Connecting together two, ten, or dozens of Basic Stamp Processors creates many advantages by amplifying the power over a single processor. These hand-made cores are the gateway to new inventions, education and advancing computing experimentation.

Configuration

The SEED includes piezo speakers, batteries, portability, power LEDs, a control panel with individual board switches, and is fully perfboarded for wiring, sensors and projects. It uses the famous BS1 stamps and its unique architecture as a ten core processing machine, and includes a Parallax 433 Mhz wireless radio frequency communications feature.

Click on the image to zoom on the Seed Supercomputer diagram.

Featured

The project is over eight months in the making and works out details using the Basic Stamp 1 for parallel clustered processing, serial Rx and Tx, one wire interface, and wireless radio communications for talk with other Basic Stamp Supercomputers or individual equipped-Stamps. The developed applications include a new interpreter language for use with any of the collective cores.

Objectives

The objective of creating this project is to have an enjoyable learning experience, expand education, learn more about supercomputers (principles of supercomputing, clustering hardware and parallel programming), and to serve as a platform for some very interesting experiments and demonstration projects. It also promotes the new concept of the Stamp Hobby Supercomputer. The Baby could be the basis of an educational classroom project, a science fair dream, or the fundamental idea in your next exciting Stamp project. The SBS can become an Adjunct to more Stamp supercomputers or any single computer.

Computing Power & Ratings

Comparing Stamps to Stamps, the novel SEED has a powerful cluster of ten BS1s, each in a Project Board that amplifies the power of a single stamp by a factor of ten. It creates a super Basic Stamp. The port count goes upward from 8 to 80. Speed gains escalate from 4 to 40Mhz. Instruction code capacity in EEPROM grows from 80 to 800. Software is transformed from a single linear program to 10 programs running simultaneously in parallel. Program execution speed increases from 2,000 IPS to 20,000 IPS.

Breadboard real estate goes up ten times. The addition of both software and hardware programming adds great flexibility. In general, the computing power is in the number of ports, new capabilities of hardware clustering, and revolutionary new software. It is rated not by the speed of conventional supercomputing but rather its comparison to ten times the speed of a single hobby Stamp processor and innovative software.

In the Works

In the works: a complete assembly manual, new code examples, schematic, and applications, to be added in the near future. Below are post areas reserved for these information topics that will be filled when the material is completed.

Summary

Of course the big advantage to this new Stamp supercomputer is the new software that changes the way the supercomputer functions. Originally dubbed the "Hive Algorithm," SEED is the software that feed this supercomputer in a new way.

Unique Experiences

There was an interesting experience that happened when the unit was first powered up, and it was completely unexpected. The construction of the individual Parallax Stamp 1 Project Board is unique. As a result, all bright red power LEDs lit up and began to twinkle like a Christmas tree!!! It was an awesome effect, not intended, but fully explainable. More on this later.