Minecraft CPU now available | Hacker News Reader

Minecraft CPU now available

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35 pointsmambodog12 comments

I thought I should provide a bit of explanation, as the linked thread really doesn't say much. This is a complete functioning CPU, based on a homebrew CPU design, built within the game Minecraft. It's very cool because you can walk around inside a working CPU and inspect the state of every circuit, register, logic gate, etc.

Video demonstration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sNge0Ywz-M

The CPU design being implemented here comes from the book The Elements of Computer Systems[1], which defines a whole hardware & software platform.

From the linked thread, this is an isometric render of the CPU/game world, done by reddit member 'yonis': http://i.imgur.com/6ithi.png

[1] http://books.google.com/books?id=THie6tt-2z8C&printsec=f...

Is there any physical analogue of this type of thing, perhaps in some computing museum? Some kind of giant mechanical CPU that I can walk inside of and inspect the registers and logic gates as computations are being performed?

Not quite the same, but there is a working replica of Babbage's difference engine N.o.2 in the science museum in London. You can walk round it and see how it works. I think they run it for a few minutes at set times during the day. http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/computing_and_data_p...

People have built LEGO logic gates: http://goldfish.ikaruga.co.uk/logic.html

Unfortunately, a quick Google doesn't turn up any LEGO ALU or CPU implementations. I wouldn't be surprised if the amount of energy required to operate any non-trivial digital circuit would be too much for the LEGO gates to handle. It might be possible to simply upgrade the LEGO gates to metal components.

This paper begins with a brief introduction to mechanical logic: http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/mechano.html

As somebody else mentioned, there are the Babbage engines - I saw the Difference Engine replica in the Science Museum in London a couple of years back, and it is truly a thing of wonder.

And of course you could just use electromechanical relays, put LEDs on each signalling line, and run the whole thing sufficiently slowly to allow computation to be observed in all its rattling, clicking glory. I reckon a working relay computer spread out on a large piece of plastic with labels of all the parts would be a pretty awesome museum exhibit :)

They have some working parts (or a whole?) Zuse Z2 electro-mechanical computer in the Berliner Technik Museum.

Konrad Zuse built the world's first functional program-controlled Turing-complete computer. He also designed the first high-level programming language.

The earth?

context: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Places_in_The_Hitchhikers_Guide...

Also noteworthy: a video wherein the creator proposes a virtual museum of contraptions as an educational outreach mechanism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aaTwJnMVXY

For other submissions and discussions, here's a search you might find useful/helpful.

http://searchyc.com/submissions/cpu+minecraft?sort=by_date

I have no experience of Minecraft at all, so I have no real idea what's going on in these videos. I've watched a bit, but can't figure out what's going on.

And that's interesting to me for a slightly strange reason.

I give lots of talks about math and computing, and sometimes i can see in my audience a complete disconnect with what I'm talking about. They have no idea why it's cool that there's a square root of -1 modulo 101, but not mod 103, even when I've been talking about the motivation and the reasons.

They have the knowledge, but not the experience. The experience can make all the difference between "getting it" and "not getting it".

It's not enough to read books, blogs and articles. It's not enough to listen to talks and join in conversations. Seomtimes you ahve to do it for yourself, to get your hands dirty, to build an intuition based on direct personal experience, and not just conveyed second- or even third-hand knowledge.

"Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." -- Samuel Beckett

----

(Of course, there's always: No. Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try. -- Yoda)

I think if people could actually see what their computers did on the inside, their head would explode.

This reminds me of the Commodore 64 emulator where you can see pretty much a full slice of active memory, along with all the various graphics buffers, and tweak them as you wish. This takes it to another level: you can literally see and poke every physical component.

Can you fly in Minecraft? It's fun to walk around a CPU, but that looks like a lot of walking.

Simulation that can simulate itself!

"You're very clever, young man, very clever- but it's turtles all the way down!"

http://xkcd.com/505/

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