[HN Gopher] How to Make a CPU - A Simple Picture Based Explanation
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How to Make a CPU - A Simple Picture Based Explanation
Author : accrual
Score : 193 points
Date : 2023-10-22 16:41 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.robertelder.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.robertelder.org)
| userbinator wrote:
| For those who read the comments first: The article is about
| semiconductor fabrication, not computer architecture.
| tpoindex wrote:
| Yeah, I was expecting the geek equivalent of "How to Draw an
| Owl in Two Simple Steps" meme. Step 1: Start with some NAND
| gates. Step 2: Now make the rest of the fucking CPU.
|
| Random reference:
| https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d4/28/29/d42829227cd7526d75af...
| satvikpendem wrote:
| It's actually funny that that meme is now not viable anymore,
| due to the proliferation of text-to-image generators.
| troupe wrote:
| This course is pretty much what you described, but incredibly
| good pedagogy. https://www.nand2tetris.org/
| dahart wrote:
| There's a lovely game called Turing Complete on Steam that
| will take you from a nand gate through making a simple game
| in your own assembly that run on the processor you built.
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1444480/Turing_Complete/
| gdprrrr wrote:
| Also MHRD https://steamcommunity.com/app/576030/
| hiichbindermax wrote:
| And https://nandgame.com/
| grishka wrote:
| That's the hardest part of "making a CPU" anyway, if you define
| CPU specifically as a microprocessor, because people have built
| working hobby CPUs with all kinds of more easily approachable
| tech, like relays, vacuum tubes, discrete transistors, and
| logic gate ICs. Basically anything that can act as one of the
| universal logic gates (NAND, XOR) will work as a CPU building
| block.
| moritonal wrote:
| _Minecraft and Dwarf fortress have entered the chat_
| clnq wrote:
| For those who want to know how to build a CPU on a breadboard,
| I recommend the book "But How Do It Know?" and the Scott CPU
| architecture.
| bux93 wrote:
| I followed the instructions carefully and ended up with a bunch
| of RAM because I used the wrong "chromium-etched photo-
| lithographic quartz mask" or whatever. The guy on ebay said it
| was an i7. Took ages.
| huytersd wrote:
| I wish he broke down step 16 into a lot more steps explaining how
| individual features where built up in this easy, eli5 way.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Ok so now I have a dream. Is not as good as the dream the other
| guy had but it's my dream.
|
| I want to build a course, or a series of courses, where one
| rebuilds the world. It's the sort of thing one could do slowly
| with one's kids.
|
| Yes it's like that book "the knowledge" and related stuff. But
| Inhave done things like building a sextant to use that to measure
| the circumference of the earth and so on, and really I never
| imagined Incoukd actually build my own cpu to run my own language
| - but it's there.
|
| One could literally go from fire, to solar system, to lime and
| then to CPUs.
|
| The world we live in is insanely complex, but it is ...
| rebuildable
|
| I guess I am inspired by the quote Feynman left on his blackboard
| - "that which I cannot recreate I do not understand"
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Is the other guy this one?: https://www.youtube.com/@htme
| skinner927 wrote:
| It's actually probably not possible. We've exhausted all the
| easy to find/surface layer minerals. Oil doesn't just leak out
| of the ground anywhere. Iron, copper, coal, are all
| underground.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Right, we've made it easy, it's all on the surface now in
| scrapyards and landfills
|
| </grew up watching junkyard wars and was highly dissapointed
| to find out the better gear was planted among the junk to
| make the tv show viable>
| kaon123 wrote:
| Very good point. I read Olaf Stapledon's First and Last man,
| a sci-fi book which describes the next few billion years for
| mankind and deals with this issue.
|
| In one scenario, human society collapses, spends 80 million
| years living as hunter/gatherers (with some evolution) and
| then develops once again to a technological civilization, in
| part because the minerals and fossil fuels have been
| replenished.
| monlockandkey wrote:
| Ooo yes. I share your dream as well. A comprehensive guide on
| how to make anything from scratch would be amazing.
|
| I guess to get started, it would be a process of reverse
| engineeringing to work out steps of a build, and then build a
| dependency tree from that.
|
| E.g the linked guide to making a CPU depends on using some
| chemicals, there would need to be an explanation of how those
| chemicals are obtained, and then subsequently on how the
| equipment to facilitate that is made. Until it resolves to
| primative tools and processes to obtain raw material.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Check out "Open Source Ecology" and "Global Village
| Construction Set"
|
| I participated in a couple of Marcin's workshops, AMA
|
| also CollapseOS
|
| I'm interested in it too for disaster recovery scenarios. Just
| started my HAM radio journey, seems like a community that likes
| to re-establish comms when everything else fails.
| 0xf00ff00f wrote:
| Check out "The Toaster Project".
| lmm wrote:
| I'd recommend against this one. It's frustratingly light on
| actual detail and heavy on some 20-year-old's Big Thoughts.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Play Factorio, maybe with some more intense mods.
| pigeons wrote:
| https://github.com/civboot/civboot
| coob wrote:
| The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of
| a Cataclysm
|
| https://www.amazon.co.uk/Knowledge-Rebuild-Civilization-Afte...
| moritonal wrote:
| You might enjoy the anime Dr Stone, which involves someone
| doing exactly this, but packaged in a fun almost course-like
| format.
| jgn wrote:
| If optics and photolithography interest you I recommend Huygens
| Optics on YT [0]. Jeroen, the creator, has an engrossing passion
| for the material.
|
| Jeri's process [1] is wild compared to Sam's lab.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/@HuygensOptics
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdcKwOo7dmM
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| What are the key differences between CPUs now are CPUs twenty
| years ago? Sure we can pack more transistors into a smaller
| space, but clock speed has plateaued. Are all the innovation
| purely in pipelines and branch prediction?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I think clever choice of instruction set is another one.
| Today's x86-64 is a far cry from what an 8088 could do, and
| Apple's Silicon does more in one clock cycle than its
| predecessors by a mile.
| drdrey wrote:
| plus out of order execution, hyperthreading, SIMD, better and
| bigger memory caches, more cores, more power efficiency
| deepfriedginger wrote:
| So, basically just like baking a cake
| logbiscuitswave wrote:
| This reminds me of a text file I found back in the 1990s on a BBS
| about "how to build your own atomic bomb". The first step was
| something along the lines of "obtain 50 lbs of weapons grade
| plutonium" as if you could just walk into your local military
| surplus store and pick up a crate. It was pretty obvious at that
| point that the whole thing was meant to be humorous.
| nicman23 wrote:
| this reads like a Nile Green meme
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