Submitted by Like all modern processors the Mega-processor is built from transistors. It’s just that instead of using teeny-weeny ones integrated on a silicon chip it uses discrete individual ones like those below. Thousands of them. And loads of LEDs.
Hand-built. Insane, but also very cool.
If you are gonna go old school, why not radio tubes!!
Ah hell no! They’d burn out so often, you’d be spending all your time searching for the broken one and replacing it. Those are best left to guitar amps.
Also, a lot of heat. Really a lot. Similar capability processor built with those will require an expensive cooling system.
Edited 2015-06-23 22:16 UTC
Oh man, didn’t even think about the heat! or the electricity required! Holy heck, even for the transistor version… that could be pricey.
Here is an interesting interview about MESM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve_sxB_A958
They had to remove ceilings in the building in order for that beast not to overheat.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve_sxB_A958&t=5m35s
Edited 2015-06-23 22:21 UTC
Nah! If you’re REALLY going to go old school, you’re gonna use mechanical relays.
You mean like Harry Porter did?
http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~harry/Relay/
Yes, exactly. Now that is some fine, old school computer designing!
That sounds like Skrillex
Not old school, but still cool and takes a lot of time to build 😉
https://xkcd.com/505/
This is the kind of thing that should be taught at a basic level to all computer scientists. Simple CPU design. Obviously the Intels of the world are a tad more complex but this is an incredible achievement for someone’s hobby. I now want to see it when the LEDs start blinking!
Isn’t it? I thought all computer scientist had their obligatory Patterson & Hennessy computer architecture book.
nope. Granted this is pushing two decades ago, but we were taught only the general concepts. We wern’t for example taught how to make an adder using only transistors.
But will it run Crysis?
… in 2560×1600 at 200 FPS?
Modern gamers are spoiled rotten.
It just seems reductio ad absurdum to do this.
In college, we built a 4 bit ALU out of 74xx components and wire wrap as a class project. It was a completely approachable and showed pretty much everything that needed to be seen.
You don’t learn or explain much doing an 8-Bit ALU that you don’t learn or have explained doing a 4-bit one.
While I appreciate the value of seeing some gates implemented in transistors, or even maybe a flip flop, after the first 1000 or so, you’d think you’d have it all figured out.
So, as an exercise, I can see someone “here’s some gates in transistors”, or even some sequential logic. From there you can go “Now, all of these are crushed in to these little black boxes” and here’s a simple register or ALU in discrete logic.
“See all these gates? Now we’re representing in software, and we’ll download them in to this FPGA. See, here’s the gates from our ALU — we program the FPGA, and you can see the signals on the pins work the same way…now lets build a CPU”
I mean, this guy is even doing 16 bit registers for crying out loud.
I assume it’s an academic project and he doesn’t have to pay for the power.
Good on him, wish him luck, I think the presentation is spectacular — but…I just think it’s a bit much, and it could have been done with equal success and more efficiently using modern tools and techniques.
At least it’s not relays.
Edited 2015-06-24 17:48 UTC
What people do for fun varies. One builds a descrete 16bit CPU the other jumps from a building.
Who is crazier?
It’s a hobby. He’s doing it for fun, you see? There’s no need to deconstruct his motivation.
The UK magazine “Personal Computer World” had it’s first issue in the seventies which included a similarish article to the one featured here. … la meme chose.