Tristan Ross 😺❄️

I like computers and cats.

ちょっと日本語上手。にゃー

Ko-fi:

[Tristan Ross 😺❄️ @RossComputerGuy]

I write posts and try to do them daily or at least weekly. Check out my site (https://t.co/pusGJRoChn) for my latest posts. I often write about topics like ARM, RISC-V, NixOS, and things I am interested in or involved in.

[mjones (@numinit) @_numinit]

The @NixVegas team is going to do a few posts debriefing about the different parts of this year's event once we get a little post-DEF CON sleep. Badge, CTF, and network were all extremely unique engineering challenges with Nix at the forefront. Amazing teamwork from everyone

[Tristan Ross 😺❄️ @RossComputerGuy]

@C11H13NO @NixVegas We were only handing them out to our speakers.

[Tristan Ross 😺❄️ @RossComputerGuy]

@yyovil Yeah, I had 4 sdcard writers going at once to flash like a dozen cards with the NixOS image.

[Tristan Ross 😺❄️ @RossComputerGuy]

The Nix Badge runs NixOS on RISC-V and Arm on the same SoM.

#NixVegas

[Tristan Ross 😺❄️ @RossComputerGuy]

@psyclyx Is that pushed right now? I've hit some dead ends on my JIT stuff and might just reset and start over from this.

[Tristan Ross 😺❄️ @RossComputerGuy]

I gave Claude my webcam and asked it to take a picture of my cats when the sun comes up. It decided to do solar calculations.

[Tristan Ross 😺❄️ @RossComputerGuy]

@notashelf I think it'll be K3 when I get it. But eventually it'll be my own RISC-V CPU because NixOS will just work.

[Nix Vegas @NixVegas]

Thank you to @DeterminateSys for the Closure tier sponsorship of Nix Vegas at DEF CON 34! Your support helped pay for sponsor badges, and will support our artist, Kenz Tobias (https://t.co/f2XwjoOxMK)

[Tristan Ross 😺❄️ @RossComputerGuy]

@psyclyx You'll like the JIT improvements I am cooking up. Arithmetic is a lot faster. The hard stuff has been things like string interpolation.

[Nix Vegas @NixVegas]

Choose DEF CON. Choose agency. Choose the NixCTF. Choose getting your PR merged, and the Nix Party. Choose pwning Hydra. Choose Nix Vegas.

[Tristan Ross 😺❄️ @RossComputerGuy]

@ProgrammerDude Yes

[Tristan Ross 😺❄️ @RossComputerGuy]

Going to be booting NixOS on River RC1.f, Delta V1.

[Tristan Ross 😺❄️ @RossComputerGuy]

@ProgrammerDude I've had NVME's die almost every year due to how much I use Nix.

[Tristan Ross 😺❄️ @RossComputerGuy]

@crertel I've had to remind it about how many cores and how much RAM I have and it's then said that it's too much for the task at hand.

[Tristan Ross 😺❄️ @RossComputerGuy]

@psyclyx @bereknyei Trying my codegen backend on this.

[Tristan Ross 😺❄️ @RossComputerGuy]

Claude traced River and found it didn't correctly change modes. It figured that out via a unit test dumping a vcd file and some python to decode it.

[Tristan Ross 😺❄️ @RossComputerGuy]

Ofc this is something which I updated in claude-for-hardware. I'm really hoping that tools like Claude can help figure out these weird edge cases. It does take someone knowing how this stuff works to direct an LLM. However, LLM's are becoming a very powerful and useful tool. For hardware things, LLM's have allowed me to do complex hardware engineering tasks. I've always been a software person but I do have a decent understanding of hardware.

Tools like Claude aren't going to replace experienced engineers, they're going to make those experienced engineers more capable. As well, to some degree, these tools can make capable engineers more efficient and faster.

There will always be edge cases where LLM's will not perform that well or have missing context. But as this technology improves and more capable models come out, along with improving skills and harnesses, they will become increasingly more useful.

I never thought in 100 years that I would use an LLM to design hardware or complex software. It's just this year that LLM's have become useful.

https://t.co/YliYvcGL2S

[Tristan Ross 😺❄️ @RossComputerGuy]

Claude and I spent like 4 or 5 hours yesterday diving into why DDR wasn't working. It led to the serdes not working with nextpnr. Vivado built bitstreams worked but not when done through nextpnr. Disassembled the pre built Vivado bitstream for UberDDR3 and did some research. The problem is that the serdes aren't properly fuzzed. Using pre-route and pre-place hooks to place the serdes on X0Y145/X0Y141 fixed them. Now I'm just running the last fixes for the DDR3 controller and PHY in Harbor and I should be able to boot Linux on River soon.

[Tristan Ross 😺❄️ @RossComputerGuy]

Claude and I spent like 4 or 5 hours yesterday diving into why DDR wasn't working. It led to the serdes not working with nextpnr. Vivado built bitstreams worked but not when done through nextpnr. Disassembled the pre built Vivado bitstream for UberDDR3 and did some research. The problem is that the serdes aren't properly fuzzed. Using pre-route and pre-place hooks to place the serdes on X0Y145/X0Y141 fixed them. Now I'm just running the last fixes for the DDR3 controller and PHY in Harbor and I should be able to boot Linux on River soon.

[Tristan Ross 😺❄️ @RossComputerGuy]

@FelixCLC_ I hope the UEFI firmware for River that I designed doesn't break. At the very least, EDKII on my Ampere box always works.