OpenEuphoria

1. 2nd Contest ... Purpose, get people using RC2

• Posted by jeremy (admin) Dec 08, 2010
• 3004 views
• Last edited Dec 11, 2010

4.0.0 RC has been released, it's time for another mini-contest! I want to be right up front, however, that 4.0 use is not required. You can enter the contest using 3.x.

This contest will be a bit more involved but still pretty easy. This time, however, scoring will be a little bit different. 100 possible points for all test cases working. 20% bonus if you are in the top 20% for token count and a 20% bonus if you are in the top 20% for execution speed. A 20 point bonus will be given to anyone using a new 4.0 construct. A 20 point bonus will be given to anyone using a new 4.0 standard library routine. Total possible points without bonus = 100. Total possible with bonuses awarded to everyone = 140. Total possible points with all bonuses 202.

Now, on with the contest definition.

A certain computer has ten registers. Each register and RAM location holds an integer value. Instructions are encoded as three-digit integers with the exception of the print instructions. The encoding is as follows:

All registers initially contain 000. All ram addresses initially contain 0 except for ram address 0 which should contain -1 making it easy to provide looping structures. Anything after the 3 digit instruction is a comment.

An example program:

$ cat > prog1.txt 
215 Set register 1 to 5 
225 Set register 2 to 5 
612 Added register 2 to register 1 
?1  Print the value of register 1 
?2  Print the value of register 2 
100 Halt 
$ eui cpu.ex prog1.txt 
10 
5 

Let's do this a bit differently. Please state here on this message if you are going to participate. That will make things more interesting. As with the last contest, the contest can be discussed here but code and algorithms should not be discussed in any detail.

Deadline is 1 week, i.e. 7PM EST December 15th 2010. Please do not send me submissions before Monday. I would like to work on my own solution w/o being influenced. Mine will not count, but would like to have fun too After Monday, please send submissions to jeremy A.T. cowgar dot com.

Updates

• Ram is 1,000 bytes long, address 0 should be initialized to -1 for ease of looping structions and all other addresses should be initialized to 0. Ram should store a Euphoria integer
• Ram, registers and goto are all 0 based index
• There is no requirement to handle invalid instructions, registers or ram addresses, it's OK to let the program crash
• ??d should print a trailing space

Sample test cases

Sample test cases are located on our contest SCM server at hg:contest/file/default/2010-12-15-cpu. See the .cpu and .out files. Example testing

% eui myapp.ex basics.cpu > basics.mine 
% diff basics.mine basics.out 

If your application crashes or has a different output then your CPU program is not functioning as expected.

Final Words

Submissions will be added to our hg:contest repository. To count your tokens, you may use the token_count program found there.

3. Re: 2nd Contest ... Purpose, get people using RC2

• Posted by DerekParnell (admin) Dec 08, 2010
• 2874 views

What are the RAM restrictions for the certain computer? For example, how many bits can be stored in each RAM address - are they 30-bit Euphoria integers or some other format? What is the size of the address space we can work with?

5. Re: 2nd Contest ... Purpose, get people using RC2

• Posted by PeteE Dec 08, 2010
• 2851 views

I'm in.

Q: Does the goto instruction treat the program as zero or one-based?

Q: Is RAM indexed zero or one-based?

Q: What if the program doesn't have a halt at the end?

Q: What should the machine do about:

• invalid instructions
• invalid RAM addresses
• invalid goto address

7. Re: 2nd Contest ... Purpose, get people using RC2

• Posted by jimcbrown (admin) Dec 08, 2010
• 2816 views

I'm in.

9. Re: 2nd Contest ... Purpose, get people using RC2

• Posted by DerekParnell (admin) Dec 08, 2010
• 2827 views

Also, my reading of your spec is that REGISTERS and RAM are two independently addressable locations. That is, there are ten registers, numbered 0 - 9, each capable of holding a Euphoria integer. There are also an unknown number of RAM locations that are each capable of hold a Euphoria integer, and these are numbered (addressed) 0 - ????.

About the competition, can we put in more than one entry? For example, I might want to submit one that has a low token count and another that has a high functionality count (pretty .LST output, assemble to 'machine code' file, syntax analysis, improved runtime error messages, etc ...).

11. Re: 2nd Contest ... Purpose, get people using RC2

• Posted by jeremy (admin) Dec 09, 2010
• 2784 views

UPDATE: Ram address 0 should be initialized in Euphoria to -1. This will enable much easier looping structures and the ability to subtract.

Jeremy

13. Re: 2nd Contest ... Purpose, get people using RC2

• Posted by jeremy (admin) Dec 09, 2010
• 2705 views

To factor our Euphoria's time of parsing, I was thinking I would do it either translated or bound but am up for suggestions.

Jeremy

15. Re: 2nd Contest ... Purpose, get people using RC2

• Posted by mattlewis (admin) Dec 09, 2010
• 2675 views

I think they all provide interesting metrics, though perhaps just bound and translated.

Matt

17. Re: 2nd Contest ... Purpose, get people using RC2

• Posted by PeteE Dec 09, 2010
• 2683 views

Whew. That does make things easier, and negative numbers possible. While we're changing things, could we specify ??d to print the register followed by a space? Thanks.

P.S. I'm having more fun writing test programs than the contest entry itself.

19. Re: 2nd Contest ... Purpose, get people using RC2

• Posted by jeremy (admin) Dec 09, 2010
• 2655 views

If you are, do you have any long running ones that would be a good benchmark? i.e. uses most (if not all) instructions and takes a while to complete?

Jeremy

21. Re: 2nd Contest ... Purpose, get people using RC2

• Posted by ChrisB (moderator) Dec 09, 2010
• 2684 views

Hi

I'm in BTW

4dn multiply d by n

and do what with the result?

23. Re: 2nd Contest ... Purpose, get people using RC2

• Posted by PeteE Dec 09, 2010
• 2593 views

Are blank lines allowed?

In one of my test programs it became easier to calculate goto addresses if the destination address is the product of two numbers 1..9. This required putting blank lines in the program to make the destination instruction appear at the desired address. But is a blank line valid input? If not, I can easily insert a no-operation into the code (such as "200 r0=r0" or "300 r0+=0".)

25. Re: 2nd Contest ... Purpose, get people using RC2

• Posted by PeteE Dec 09, 2010
• 2588 views

Hmm, I think it should be:

27. Re: 2nd Contest ... Purpose, get people using RC2

• Posted by jeremy (admin) Dec 09, 2010
• 2564 views

I'd say no at this point because it wasn't in the spec as what to do with a blank line and there is already quite a bit of code written for this contest, changing the requirements now would be unfair. Sorry.

As we do more contests and learn more about it, we should alter our methods. For example, posting the spec then allowing 1 day (of the contest period) for comments, suggestions, clarifications, etc... of the spec. Those who start programming before the comment time is over have taken the risk they may have to modify the code they've already written.

Jeremy

29. Re: 2nd Contest ... Purpose, get people using RC2

• Posted by jeremy (admin) Dec 11, 2010
• 2473 views

CLARIFICATION

Ram address 1 - 999 should be initialized to zero. Ram address 0 should be initialized to -1 which provides an easy way of creating looping structures.

The original spec has been modified to reflect this clarification.

Jeremy

31. Re: 2nd Contest ... Purpose, get people using RC2

• Posted by jeremy (admin) Dec 14, 2010
• 2355 views

I've delayed too long and didn't finish my submission so mine will be again for example again, but for good measure, here is the checksum of one of my submissions (the one I like the most):

{2986893504,2470845369,1935038652,3654172199} 

Jeremy

33. Re: 2nd Contest ... Purpose, get people using RC2

• Posted by petelomax Dec 14, 2010
• 2251 views

I just emailed an entry as well.

35. Re: 2nd Contest ... Purpose, get people using RC2

• Posted by jimcbrown (admin) Dec 14, 2010
• 2276 views

Can we bump this to Dec 22?