Thursday, September 1, 2011

ASCS PART 1: A simple computing system

Hi!

Computers are one of the most important parts of our every day life.
Not only that we actively use them to do things like communicate, entertain,
educate or blog, as I am currently doing, they also control the transport of goods,
they help emergency teams to rescue people in danger and do a lot more.

But what would happen, if, someday in the future, our economy will break?
No more cheap parts from China, no more cheap microprocessors, no more cheap computers.
We would definitely have a really big problem.

But not only the possible breakdown of the economic system is a reason for me to do this project.
I also want to learn, how a processor REALLY works.
Yes, it uses logic gates, it uses a synchronous design and so on.
But how would I build a computer, if I were to do so my self?

This is, what this series of blogs will be about.
It is definitely planned as a long-time project,
so I will interrupt the series for updates on other projects.

So, what will this first blog be about?
Well, we need to define, what the computer will be able to do.
I will restrict this on only the instructions and the main build.

So, what will our system look like?
Mostly like this:


















Simple and easy.

So, now we just need the mentioned 16 instructions mentioned in the ALU.
Guess what the next blog will be about.