> We do not use any integrated circuits, there is no hiding complexity.
Call me nit-picking but it's not a great idea to "not hide complexity". Largish designs and up are all about managing complexity. It doesn't help you to try and keep everything flat in front of you - whether in schematic or hardware form. The advance made with VLSI design was to use hierachical abstraction as much as possible to keep each level of the design clear and at least somewhat in control. This is about diagrams, consistent logic design families and signals, abstractions solid enough that they can be simulated, repeatedly encapsulated, composed - and so understood and kept in mind by the human designer.
And in this case they probably do. At least the PCB seems hierarchical. But that earlier wording is alarming.
I meant presumably because I didn't look at the details and what matters is the ability to address memory (which is external to the CPU by definition) and you can emulate any machine with a smaller machine
You can't have a fast processor with 2k transistors, but don't underestimate how clever designs can build Turing complete engines out of unexpected substrates. "Given enough time" can mean it could take thousands of clock cycle to add two numbers
I think that's unnecessary rude.
This thread is about hacking something up and not building a product.
For example imagine somebody shares the "one instruction set computer" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-instruction_set_computer) project or x86 MMU being turing complete (https://github.com/jbangert/trapcc). Both are clearly just interesting hacks (which may have some interesting implications about security and what does it mean to be "code" etc) and certainly are not intended to be practical products
Call me nit-picking but it's not a great idea to "not hide complexity". Largish designs and up are all about managing complexity. It doesn't help you to try and keep everything flat in front of you - whether in schematic or hardware form. The advance made with VLSI design was to use hierachical abstraction as much as possible to keep each level of the design clear and at least somewhat in control. This is about diagrams, consistent logic design families and signals, abstractions solid enough that they can be simulated, repeatedly encapsulated, composed - and so understood and kept in mind by the human designer.
And in this case they probably do. At least the PCB seems hierarchical. But that earlier wording is alarming.