From Nand to Tetris: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles

Post by all2 » Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 3:02 AM UTC

tankenmate wrote: post #38

all2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During my intro to computer engineering course, lectures touched on why NAND gates, and the conclusion was that you can build anything you need in a basic computer using NAND gates. It boils down to expense. A BOM (bill of materials) with fewer line items tends to be cheaper. This doesn't really hold in today's world of silicon prints, but at the start I think it was price that drove the decision.

Actually if you take an XOR gate with a naive translation into NAND gates you would use 20 transistors, but if you don't need a large fan out from the output you can actually do it with 6 transistors using a pass gate layout (which is neither NAND nor NOR). So typically you don't use NAND vs NOR because of transistor count.

Post by sergex » Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 8:27 AM UTC

djmips wrote: post #42

sergex wrote: post #10

I made a small game inspired by the first lessons in the course: http://nandgame.com/

If I make a XOR circuit with 4 NAND gates it says I can do better. My 3 gate solution is to use an AND, OR, and NAND gate which would have been 6 NAND gates. However it gives me full marks for my 3 gate solution.

Post by mrunkel » Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 12:43 PM UTC

sergex wrote: post #10

I made a small game inspired by the first lessons in the course: http://nandgame.com/

Post by volkisch » Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 4:19 PM UTC

thanosnose wrote: post #29

sfifs wrote: post #4

I just completed part 1 building a computer from gates and writing an assembler and am in the middle of part 2 where you develop compilers and a stack based virtual machine. For someone like me who did not study computer science but has been a self taught programmer in the Analytics spacefor over a decade, this has been a tremendously useful and accessible introduction to basic CS concepts and very eye opening in ter…

> I wonder if there are similar courses on CS algorithms for people who didn't study CS in college. This might be a bit more challenging and less hand holding than the nand2tetris course but if you are up for it, why not go with the best? Sedgewick Algorithm book has been one of the standard algorithm books in universities for a long time. https://algs4.cs.princeton.edu/home/ https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms…

Post by sergex » Mon, Nov 26, 2018, 10:46 AM UTC

mrunkel wrote: post #45

sergex wrote: post #10

I made a small game inspired by the first lessons in the course: http://nandgame.com/

This is really awesome.. I too love the book Code by Petzold. I was wondering if I could help translate this into German? I have some work colleagues that could really benefit, but I think it would be easier if the explanatory text was German.