English Edition: In a follow up about "unusual" computers I want to focus on field programmable gate arrays - FPGAs. With my guest and former colleague at UCL, Michael McLeod, we talk about what they are, where they are used and what's so special about working with them.

Links:

• https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/field-programmable-gate-arrays
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array
• https://fpga.epcc.ed.ac.uk
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_description_language
• https://nandland.com/the-go-board/ the Go Board affordable FPGA for testing and learning
  • https://nandland.com/ Nandland have more resources on FPGA
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xilinx
  • https://web.archive.org/web/20070412183416/http://filebox.vt.edu/users/tmagin/history.htm
• https://www.amd.com/en/products/adaptive-socs-and-fpgas/fpga.html
• https://space.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/2024-10/FPL_13_B112a.pdf Paper discussing a use case of hardware preservation with FPGAs
• https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/FPGA-relatedWork/RISC.pdf Niklaus Wirth, the creator of the Pascal language, did some work with FPGA as well
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_decision_process Markov decision process
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:peter@code4thought.org
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/ (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Deutsche Ausgabe: ICON, das große Software Paket für Klimamodellierung, Wettervorhersagen und andere Anwendungsbereiche, ist auf gutem Wege Open Source Software zu werden. Aber daß das nicht immer ganz so leicht ist, werden uns in dieser Folge Hendryk Bockelmann und Jan (Jeff) Frederik Engels vom Deutschen Klimarechenzentrum und Linda Schlemmer vom Deutschen Wetterdienst erzählen.

Hier ein paar Links:

• https://www.dkrz.de/en/communication/news-archive/icon-open-source
• https://www.icon-model.org/icon_model/getting_started
• https://gitlab.dkrz.de/icon/icon-model
• https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL31FjyhyyqwkvOaj_e-EbJa4F0Z0n8yGU online courses
• https://mpimet.mpg.de/en/communication/news/icon-team-receives-international-recognition-for-groundbreaking-achievements-in-high-performance-computing
• https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/news/archive/announcements/2025/icon-team-wins-gordon-bell-prize-for-climate-modeling

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:peter@code4thought.org
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/ (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

English Edition: preserving digital data has become essential for archives and libraries, as we have seen an explosion of content. I met with various experts in the field who talk to me about the different aspects and facets of saving our data for future generations to come: Thomas Ries (University of Austin, Texas, US), Nanna Bonde Thylstrup and Katie Mackinnon (University of Copenhagen, Denmark), Andy Jackson (Digital Preservation Coalition, UK) and Laurisa Sastoque Pabon (University of Southampton, UK).

Some links to tools and sites mentioned in the episode:

• https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pronom/format/proformatsearch.aspx?status=new Pronom database by the National Archive in the UK
• https://www.dpconline.org/ Digital Preservation Coalition
  • https://bit-list.dpconline.org/ list of 'endangered digital material'
• https://thorsten-ries.net/ Thorsten Ries home page
• https://www.southampton.ac.uk/research/institutes-centres/digital-preservation-southampton Digital preservation at the Uni. Southampton
• https://arcticworldarchive.org/ Svalbard Arctic World Archive
• https://piql.com/ piql data preservation
  • https://github.com/piql GitHub Piql - the archiving file format
• https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/434376-preserving-today-s-digital-data-for-tomorrow
• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-10042-w storing data in glass/silica
• https://unlocked.microsoft.com/sealed-in-glass/ Project Silica
• https://english.umd.edu/directory/matthew-kirschenbaum Kirschenbaum papers on recovering digital texts etc.
• https://www.kali.org/tools/foremost/ the open source "forensic" data tool
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls going back in time: a link with a description of the Dead Sea scrolls

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:peter@code4thought.org
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/ (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/