topic Re: Some hardware and software development questions in Software Tuning, Performance Optimization & Platform Monitoring

Some hardware and software development questions

AndrewLobley — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 15:48:23 GMT

Hello, I'm a college student with a major in Software Development, but I wanted to pursue a project for making an amateur computer. I'm having some issues, so I just wanted to reach out and ask a few questions.

1. How many bits for a reasonable computer? I was thinking 8, but getting enough opcodes is a nightmare. I want to strike a good balance between performing multiple operations at once and actually having more than 14 operations. But, the more I have, the less that can be used together. This leads me to my next question, which is:

2. What kind of operations should I have? How many? For what?

3. Registers vs integrated RAM? Specifying an address leads to fewer instructions but more complexity. If I use registers, how can I specify them?

4. What kind of operations should my ALU have? Currently I have addition, inversion, carry and AND operations. By inverting B and carrying in at the same time, subtraction can be performed. I figure that's a low number, but right now I'm seriously restrained by the amount of opcodes I can have.

5. What should my assembly syntax look like? I'd rather start off easy, and I know a fair amount of assembly, but certainly not enough.

6. What are some good resources for learning assembly? 8086 Assembly will probably be the kind I want to learn for this, but x86-64 is something I'd also like to learn.

7. How do assemblers work? I thought of making one in Python and just using string slicing to process operations from an asm file and then outputting the machine code to another file, and I did successfully do that with a previous iteration of my processor, but I couldn't complete that one due to very specific constraints.

8. What should I use for developing and testing my CPU? I've been using Circuitverse, but should I instead learn HDL or something like that?

Here is my project currently if you're interested:
https://circuitverse.org/users/204320/projects/literally-a-whole-computer

The assembler py file is on a different computer, so I can't attach it right now.

I didn't know where exactly to put this, but I thought that this forum was the right place to ask.

Re: Some hardware and software development questions

AndrewLobley — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 16:12:52 GMT

Bonus question: How do I address memory automatically and use stacks?

Re: Some hardware and software development questions

AlHill — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 16:19:19 GMT

Your answers will be found by taking a number of computer science courses at your university.

Doc (not an Intel employee or contractor)
[Maybe Windows 12 will be better]

Re: Some hardware and software development questions

AndrewLobley — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 16:22:13 GMT

I wish that was the case, but my university offers no assembly courses or electrical engineering courses, so I'm on my own here. I understand the basic principles well enough, but in practice it's hard to actually implement these things. My major is more on the high-level programming languages aspect on computers, which is what I want to do, but I also want to learn computer design and low-level programming.

Re: Some hardware and software development questions

AlHill — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 16:25:56 GMT

Try an online university. This is a technical support community, not CompSci 101.

Doc (not an Intel employee or contractor)
[Maybe Windows 12 will be better]

Re: Some hardware and software development questions

AndrewLobley — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 16:43:01 GMT

If this isn't the place, then what forum should I go to? I'm taking a coursera course on the subject, but I'd like to get a few more opinions and suggestions from people.

Re: Some hardware and software development questions

AlHill — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 16:46:45 GMT

This community (community.intel.com) is for technical support of Intel products and software. There is no forum here for your questions.

Doc (not an Intel employee or contractor)
[Maybe Windows 12 will be better]

Re: Some hardware and software development questions

AndrewLobley — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 17:08:10 GMT

I posted here because I want to know how Intel does/did it. Are there any other places I can go to so that I can get in contact with Intel and have a conversation about CPU design? It doesn't have to be this specific website.

Re: Some hardware and software development questions

AlHill — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 17:28:45 GMT

What you want is not provided here. I explained what the community is for. Outside of that, Intel does not provide what you want.

Doc (not an Intel employee or contractor)
[Maybe Windows 12 will be better]

Re: Some hardware and software development questions

AndrewLobley — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 17:55:33 GMT

Listen man, there's more websites than this online. I'm just asking if you know of any that are specifically for these kind of questions, or if Intel has a contact medium that I can use to ask these questions. I just want you to point me in the right direction. If you don't know, that's fine. There's no need to be so rude.

Re: Some hardware and software development questions

AlHill — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 17:53:55 GMT

Listen man, you are in the wrong place. There is no support for your questions here, or on Intel.com. No, I do not know a place for you to ask such questions. And, I have not been rude, yet.

I suggested you take a college course. You should do that.

Doc (not an Intel employee or contractor)
[Maybe Windows 12 will be better]