I considered trying to do a simple CPU design from logic gates too. But I ended up wondering about some of the performance characteristics. Maybe some people who are knowledgeable are reading this. What I am wondering about is the switching speed of logic gates as compared to the signal speed in the electric connections for a realistic CPU. I.e., how many logic gate lengths (assume logic gates to be square) does an e…
"The MOnSter 6502 runs at about 1/20th the speed of the original, thanks to the much larger capacitance of the design. The maximum reliable clock rate is around 50 kHz. The primary limit to the clock speed is the gate capacitance of the MOSFETs that we are using, which is much larger than the capacitance of the MOSFETs on an original 6502 die."
how awesome that this exists. I was learning how CPU works and designing my own CPU w emulator like 20 years ago as a teenager by googling into obscure forums, blog posts and homemade cpu webring. I made an experiment not long ago "would I be able to find in google by myself all learning materials to do that again". The outcome of that experiment deeply unsettled me. Google just gives you shit and total garbage. Half…
I agree. Its hard though, SEO people are malicious, persistent and with modern tech, have incredible tools. And with hand curation, its hard to feel like its 'worth it' when instead of being able to build a community, your results are scraped and shown out of context. If you have any thoughts on how to get that sort of culture back I'm open to it
I pay for kagi.com and they seem to be fighting that battle. I also frequent their "small web" (https://blog.kagi.com/small-web) initiative.
I started this journey a while back using Tanenbaum's MIC-1 during my Uni days with a another colleague. Still have it online if anyone is interested: https://github.com/elvircrn/mic-1.
I considered trying to do a simple CPU design from logic gates too. But I ended up wondering about some of the performance characteristics. Maybe some people who are knowledgeable are reading this. What I am wondering about is the switching speed of logic gates as compared to the signal speed in the electric connections for a realistic CPU. I.e., how many logic gate lengths (assume logic gates to be square) does an e…
I teach the introduction to computing class at MSU and agree entirely: most students need to start with the absolutely most simple introduction to computing possible. My favorite two models are: The Scott CPU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNN_tTXABUA (great book, website is now offline unfortunately: https://web.archive.org/web/20240430093449/https://www.butho... ) An extremely simple non-pipelined 8 bit CPU. The e…
I made a Little Man Computer simulator this year that I use to teach students, but it uses binary and 2's complement which helps them learn that too: https://www.mathsuniverse.com/lmc
As much as I really benefited from being able to internalize system architectures like these many times over… I do wish now, as someone who ended up in software, that there were similar hand-holdy third guides to implementing the “core” of out-of-order superscalar execution engines, too. They’re crucial to understanding how modern processors _kinda actually work to a zeroth order approximation_, even though it’s impossible to convey the engineering scope of modern CPUs to those who need hand-holding, but I
I considered trying to do a simple CPU design from logic gates too. But I ended up wondering about some of the performance characteristics. Maybe some people who are knowledgeable are reading this. What I am wondering about is the switching speed of logic gates as compared to the signal speed in the electric connections for a realistic CPU. I.e., how many logic gate lengths (assume logic gates to be square) does an e…
If you want to go a step further, here's one built from discrete transistors: https://www.megaprocessor.com/
how awesome that this exists. I was learning how CPU works and designing my own CPU w emulator like 20 years ago as a teenager by googling into obscure forums, blog posts and homemade cpu webring. I made an experiment not long ago "would I be able to find in google by myself all learning materials to do that again". The outcome of that experiment deeply unsettled me. Google just gives you shit and total garbage. Half…
I agree. Its hard though, SEO people are malicious, persistent and with modern tech, have incredible tools. And with hand curation, its hard to feel like its 'worth it' when instead of being able to build a community, your results are scraped and shown out of context. If you have any thoughts on how to get that sort of culture back I'm open to it
tbh I have dreamt about what could be possible if we were making some sort of "closed doors" internet branch. You can access with a single account bound to you, invite only, something like PGP with a web of trust. Good "legacy" internet websites can be chained and indexed through some sort of thematical webring, with a good search and comment functionality added on top, as a global HN. Any external content is opt-in and vetted. Internal content with user rating system (not googles SEO algorithm ranked), i.e. allowing users to downvote nonsense bullshit into hell. robots on internal content are allowed through strictly controlled API that also pays original authors. Browsing automatically costs some "tokens" that are being paid towards owners of sites you visit so at least semi useful sites can sustain themselves and good ones make money, without spamming everything with ad banners or being incentivized to do ragebait-clickbait content. But thats all nonsense dreams, nobody will be willing to pay for browsing internet, even if high quality.