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Amazing. Do you have some docs / resources on this online? How would you go around building a computer out of commodity components today? Do you think compilin

Amazing. Do you have some docs / resources on this online? How would you go around building a computer out of commodity components today? Do you think compiling everything on own computer results in noticeable increase in performance? Say, distribution provides binaries built on Intel, but I want to run on AMD, does it make sense to recompile binaries on the AMD?

nonrandomstring 4y ago
> docs / resources on this online? Surprisingly the old textbook went to three editions, the last in 1997 [1] It looks as if it may be on archive.org [2], and is definitely in Google Books and LibGen. > How would you go around building a computer out of commodity components today? Good question. You could of course retrace my steps using 1980s technology, but I wouldn't advise that. The problem today is physical scale. Most components are surface mount and you really need to build multi layer boards and use a bench microscope to place and solder. Getting anything hand-built to reliably run faster than 100MHz without knowing what you're doing is no fun. Everything I spent a thousand hours building is in a SoC for $1 now. > Do you think compiling everything on own computer results in noticeable increase in performance? That's a question to ask Gentoo/Arch users (and BSD people who use Ports). I think yes, because hopefully you'll optimise for the architecture you have. But is is worth it? Given the many hours you'll wait, maybe not at my age :) Do it while you're young and can learn cool things from it. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/950048.Microprocessor_Systems_Design https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/950048.Microprocessor_Sy... [2] https://archive.org/details/microprocessor-systems-design-68000-hardware-software-and-interfacing-3e https://archive.org/details/microprocessor-systems-design-68...
- unforeseen9991 4y ago
  There's also the excellent https://www.nand2tetris.org/ https://www.nand2tetris.org/ From basic computing gates all the way to running tetris. It taught me so much of the lower levels. Also a comment as a former Gentoo user of 7+ years - the performance is there - 5-15% maybe. I honestly don't think it's noticeable, it never was to me, but what you learn using Gentoo has served me very well. I moved on as well. I'm too old to deal with fixing things and all the waiting, I just want it to work haha
  - stracer 4y ago
    Thanks, I was disappointed first that it's only a virtual computer in a simulator, but then I found out there is a real physical realization, using an FPGA board: https://gitlab.com/x653/nand2tetris-fpga/ https://gitlab.com/x653/nand2tetris-fpga/
- stracer 4y ago
  Thanks.

nonrandomstring 4y ago

> docs / resources on this online? Surprisingly the old textbook went to three editions, the last in 1997 [1] It looks as if it may be on archive.org [2], and is definitely in Google Books and LibGen. > How would you go around building a computer out of commodity components today? Good question. You could of course retrace my steps using 1980s technology, but I wouldn't advise that. The problem today is physical scale. Most components are surface mount and you really need to build multi layer boards and use a bench microscope to place and solder. Getting anything hand-built to reliably run faster than 100MHz without knowing what you're doing is no fun. Everything I spent a thousand hours building is in a SoC for $1 now. > Do you think compiling everything on own computer results in noticeable increase in performance? That's a question to ask Gentoo/Arch users (and BSD people who use Ports). I think yes, because hopefully you'll optimise for the architecture you have. But is is worth it? Given the many hours you'll wait, maybe not at my age :) Do it while you're young and can learn cool things from it. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/950048.Microprocessor_Systems_Design https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/950048.Microprocessor_Sy... [2] https://archive.org/details/microprocessor-systems-design-68000-hardware-software-and-interfacing-3e https://archive.org/details/microprocessor-systems-design-68...

unforeseen9991 4y ago
There's also the excellent https://www.nand2tetris.org/ https://www.nand2tetris.org/ From basic computing gates all the way to running tetris. It taught me so much of the lower levels. Also a comment as a former Gentoo user of 7+ years - the performance is there - 5-15% maybe. I honestly don't think it's noticeable, it never was to me, but what you learn using Gentoo has served me very well. I moved on as well. I'm too old to deal with fixing things and all the waiting, I just want it to work haha
- stracer 4y ago
  Thanks, I was disappointed first that it's only a virtual computer in a simulator, but then I found out there is a real physical realization, using an FPGA board: https://gitlab.com/x653/nand2tetris-fpga/ https://gitlab.com/x653/nand2tetris-fpga/
stracer 4y ago
Thanks.