User:Mxberner

Max Berner Marquette REU Summer 2022 Advisor: Dr. Brylow

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5/31 Orientation Day

- Met the cohort, mentor, and research group.

- Reviewed potential subjects of research

  - Exploring CS
  - Virgil Programming Language
  - RISC-V Architecture

- Researched RISC-V as a potential processor to port OS Xinu over to.

6/1 Further research into RISC-V

  - RISC refers to Reduced Instruction Set Computer
  - Advantage: Open-Source license that does not require fees to use
  - Advantage: Creating a custom chip is easier
  - Advantage: Base module is extremely limited, allowing customization/optimization.

Creating a custom chip is easier as well.
  - Advantage: Base module has only integer registers. The very limited modules allow for customization and optimization 
  - Advantage: Power efficient, magnitudes less energy than CISC models. Has the ability to turn off individual cores and parallel compute. 
  - Disadvantage: Not many purchasable, brand-name RISC-V processors available. The market is flooded with less trustworthy options at its current state. 
  - Disadvantage: With only simple instructions available, complex tasks (i.e. video editing) are much slower with only RISC-V architecture. (This does allow for a higher core-density in a physical chip though).