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I‘m teaching a course on computer architecture at my university and there are these model processors called MUx (MU0-7) that explain how a CPU works from the gr
by thessalchips 1y ago
I‘m teaching a course on computer architecture at my university and there are these model processors called MUx (MU0-7) that explain how a CPU works from the ground up. I‘m not aware of any toys (my students keep asking me about that as well), but I wrote an interactive visualizer that illustrates the simplest processor and how data moves through it: https://pascalbormann.de/mu-vis/ https://pascalbormann.de/mu-vis/
Not mobile friendly unfortunately and maybe a bit too advanced for kids, but it could be a starting point. The code is here if you want to build on it: https://github.com/Mortano/mu0-visualization https://github.com/Mortano/mu0-visualization
- thabit 1y agoA breadboard CPU would be a good "toy" no?
- thessalchips 1y agoTrue but to do anything interesting you do need a whole bunch of wires and components, even for an 8-bit CPU. Maybe it is a good start to instead combine gates to do some useful work. People are also building CPUs in Minecraft, that should get kids engaged :)
- jjk7 1y agoThat's how I was taught, build up a CPU using TTL logic chips. Even just starting with the building blocks is useful, like build a flip-flop