3 ms·
Super impressive. Up until a couple weeks ago, I was never exposed to processor architecture, let alone the ALU. But, I had purchased the book "Elements of Co
by itsmemattchung 10y ago
Super impressive.
Up until a couple weeks ago, I was never exposed to processor architecture, let alone the ALU. But, I had purchased the book "Elements of Computing" (nand2tetris.org) which guides the reader through the necessary steps to create a (primitive) operating system, compiler, ALU—from the ground up (starting with a NAND gate). Without the book, I wouldn't have been to appreciate, or understand, this article.
- dboreham 10y agoOh wow. If I were able to clone myself, and the clone didn't need to make any money, that's exactly what I would have done with my time!
- hermitdev 10y agoI have degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering, have designed 4 ALUs and built 3 of those 4. ALUs are interesting, but they're probably one of the most simple components of a CPU. Ignoring look ahead aspects and speculative execution, the instruction decoder is probably the most complex part of a CPU, because it has to decide what inputs to use ( whether register or RAM), what part from which to receive output and where to store the result. An ALU is basically a collection of all of your common mathematical operations you'd expect in the CPU. It just takes inputs and a selector and performs the indicated operation. I designed a (unoptimized) MIPS ALU in Verikog in one evening over a bottle of whiskey (minus division related operations).