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The Self-Driving Lisp Machine
A Tenstorrent P150 (~72 RISC-V Tensix cores) running Passepartout: 72 RISC-V cores running Lisp microcode, one core dedicated to ACL2, one to Screamer, the rest to gate verification and fact store operations.
The self-driving threshold: the system can synthesize and load its own FPGA microcode or Tensix dispatch programs from within the running Lisp image. The system profiles its own gate verification latency, proposes a new microcoded instruction for the hot path, compiles RISC-V assembly from ACL2-verified specifications, loads it via PCIe DMA from within SBCL, benchmarks it — and rolls back if slower.
Every subdomain involved is software — the most codifiable domain. RISC-V ISA, SBCL internals, ACL2 metafunctions, CIC type theory, compiler optimization — all can flip to symbolic sufficiency within days to weeks of ingestion.
Timeline: ~6,000 lines of new code (microcode, PCIe DMA, Tensix management, benchmark harness). ~60 cycles at current velocity. 2-4 weeks. Total from today: 6-10 weeks.
The Tenstorrent approach is dramatically simpler than FPGA because the microcode is RISC-V assembly (software), not FPGA bitstream (hardware with minutes-per-iteration synthesis).
See also: Lisp Machine security, Verification appliance, Time estimates, Sufficiency flip, Upgrade lifecycle, Lisp economics