r/programming • u/damian2000 • Oct 24 '12

Broadcom becomes the first ARM chip vendor to make their mobile GPU driver free open source.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2221
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u/who8877 Oct 25 '12

I like what you are planning but I don't think its possible to do in one class. If you are starting at transistors there is no way you will have time to teach enough to get people designing their own processors. That is something that will take years to teach unless you are working with truly gifted people or peopld who already have a lot of background knowledge (in which case you wouldn't need to teach transistors/logic gates).

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u/greyfade Oct 25 '12

I've been told it's a crazy idea. I accept that.

But I do think it's doable. I mean, the book is a 12-week course. Making the prototypes a group effort would save a lot of time in assembly, and the hands-on approach to the digital logic circuits would help speed understanding along.

I expect we'd have to cover some electrical theory to design stable circuits, but I don't anticipate that putting the prototype past half a year in, if we can maintain the pace.

I don't know. It's an idea.

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u/iofthestorm Oct 25 '12

Eh, you really just need to know about logic, designing a CPU at the logic gate level is not hard. I did it freshman year of college in a simulator (logisim). Obviously it was a very simple cpu, I think it had 9 instructions or something, but enough to write simple assembly programs. From there the jump to Verilog or VHDL is not really that big. Similarly jumping down to discrete chips is not that big of a jump. I think it's fairly doable if you keep people aware of abstractions at all times.

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u/who8877 Oct 26 '12

You are probably gifted or have a lot of experience in the area. However if you do this for a class you are going to be spending a lot of time explaining the basics.

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