I'm Bernardo and I've been invited as the next guest for the Physics Stack Exchange AMA. The session will take place on the h Bar, on June 13th at 16:00 UTC. If you, much like me, gets awfully confused by timezones, just click here.
Post questions you'd like answered below
The AMA is always informal and relaxed, and you always have the freedom to ask questions that are not here, but this gives me and idea of what to expect to be asked about. Maybe someone really likes the SuperH architecture, and in that case I definitely need to brush up my knowledge, things like that. You can reference the previous AMAs by heather, Secret, Daniel Sank, yuggib, and Slereah.
Education and work
I was born in Chiador, a small town in the Brazilian countryside, and I later moved to Rio de Janeiro. I currently live in Lisbon, Portugal where I major in Computer Engineering. I'm mostly self-taught in what I know, and my favorite classes in uni are the maths ones, although it's what I have the hardest time with. I'm almost always around on the h-Bar if you'd like to catch me. If you really need to talk to me the tales say that if you put a pint of beer and some ICs on your porch I will show up.
I'm currently about to start my first research position working on how to benchmark ARM in a meaningful way. I also plan on doing some work on adapting the Linux Scheduler to work better with HMP architectures.
Technical interests
Quantum Computing
- I'm obsessed with P vs. NP. For what it's worth if you haven't yet read it, Aaronson wrote a great survey on the matter.
- I enjoy the hardware aspects of making a quantum computer possible a lot, even if this isn't my area of expertise.
- Recently I've been working on adapting a simple ISA, such as MIPS to support a quantum computer working as a co-processor, much like how FPU's work.
- I also have a vested interest in figuring out how to create a scheduler that can correctly allocate tasks for the quantum computer. I don't have much at all yet, just some scribbles.
Programming
- I have a passion for getting Linux to run on, say, unusual hardware. Most notably I got the following things to run Linux: My calculator, an FPGA board, a toaster. For those in the know the calculator also runs Doom.
- I'm a Free Software guy, free as in Freedom. I avoid running proprietary software whenever possible.
- I maintain beautysh which a beautifier/ autoformatter for Bash scripts.
- I like C, C++, Rust, and Python.
- I try to port every algorithm I see to use GMP and OpenMP. It's more of a hobby than anything else. You can see my implementations of Euler's Totient, and of the Ackermann Function.
- I wrote the base of an OS of my own, named DaedalOS, it's totally broken, but you can take a look if you're interested.
- Hardware
- Hardware is my main point of interest, it's where most of my time goes to nowadays. I'm particularly interested in optimizing pipelines currently.
- I developed my own CPU in VHDL. It runs at a whooping 25MHz out of a Spartan 6 FPGA. It's based on MIPS, and there's no assembler or compiler or anything. If you want to code you hate to write it in binary.
- I've started using the Open J-Core project, which aims to develop a fully open source CPU based on the, now free of patents, Hitachi Super-H architecture.
- I spend a lot of time reading documentation on architectures, I like AVR, ARM, and MIPS a lot. I dabble in x86_64 and I've been wanting to learn M68000.
- I mostly code in the P3 assembly language, which is a made-up architecture by my university. The fact that they did not opt for MIX gives me sleepless nights.
Non-Technical Stuff
- I like audio a lot, I won't say I'm an audiophile because I don't want people to think I'm a douche. And now I probably sound like a douche and I'm just making it worse so I'll stop.
- I'm passionate about beer. Invite me any time anywhere and we can have a beer together.
- I really enjoy airports
- I read some philosophy, in particular I like Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Žižek. Also, if I may boast, Žižek gifted me a signed book for my birthday
- My favorite movie is The Seventh Seal
- My favorite composer is Ravel
- I like biking a lot.
Finally, I'm very happy to have been invited to the AMA, I hope we can all have a good exchange. Looking forward to talking to you all soon.
Now that the AMA has happened, you can read the transcript here.