VIDEO: Minecraft CPU Has Memory, Performs Division
It's a virtual machine performing inside of a virtual machine. Excellent.
Over on the Minecraft forums, user "Salaja" spent the last month creating a virtual redstone CPU within the popular block-building game Minecraft. According to Salaja, the virtual machine (within a virtual machine) can actually hold up to 16 lines of code in its memory, execute said code, and then print out the result in hexadecimal onto 7 segment displays.
"This CPU was made with extensive use of INVedit, MCedit and peaceful difficulty, and wouldn't have been possible without them," he said, adding that anyone can use his designs as long as (1) he receives some credit, and (2) they're used for non-commercial purposes. "What I want to avoid is people claiming that they made this CPU, when they really didn't."
Other than the video seen below, Salaja offers other videos to demonstrate his Minecraft brilliance including "Random Number Generator," "Add and Subtract," and "Division."
"I only had a basic understanding of logic gates, flipflops, and adders before starting this project," he said when asked how he figured out how to build the working CPU. "I built it step by step, adding whatever I thought it need. I didn't follow any existing CPU architecture, so it is possible that mine is completely unique."
Salaja started by deciding on sizes for instruction (16-bit) and ALU (8-bit). He then built a giant block of memory and a way to write values for each one-- this can be done by numerous levers or a counter that selects which line you're writing to. Next he built a bus along the outputs of the memory flip flops, and added another counter to select only one instruction to be sent onto the bus at any one time.
"The counter activates a heap on AND gates on only one of the memory slots, meaning all the other slots are having their output blocked from getting onto the bus," he said, adding that builders should keep going "until it does stuff."
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But can it play Crysis?
I see what you did there
Thank you for making me feel really stupid!
The question is: CAN... you dig it? ha got ya.
Virtual machine inside a Virtual machine is a little "fat" as a description IMO.
Anyway, one hell of a job, rofl.
Cheers!
Someone did something like this in Dwarf Fortress a while back, although I dont remember if it was as complex as this or not.. Pretty damn neat none the less!
Now i wounder when hell go in the cpu business and compete with intel, amd, and arm.
(im joking)
Although nice work!
pc within a pc, computation.
omg! 0.0..... look at this video just to see how large this thing really is!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnrO3cStWOI&NR=1
yo we heard you like pcs so we put a pc within your pc so you can compute while you spend way too much time on minecraft..
This is pretty amazing.
"I only had a basic understanding of logic gates, flipflops, and adders before starting this project,"
i bet he now knows A LOT MORE!!
awesome stuff.
maybe somewhere in the future, this minecraft platform can grow into something advance enough to even have a fully operational computer!
maybe even an Altair Emulator???? or an Atari emulator complete with joystick and TV!!!!!
Great project. I'd love to create something like this one day.
wow...yeah id do that too, but i realized ahead of time that it was a total waste of time.
This guy is going to design alot of CPUs. Some ask why, he asks "why the hell not". To me this is like speanding a heap of time to write something in QBasic that would take a couple of hours in C++ or Java just to show you can do it. Well, to each his own ^_^
Crap I wish I thought of this. how awesome
You know what, I may just buy a copy of MineCraft now, just so I can brush up on my circuitry work.
Wow I feel really dumb right now.
SSSSSSSSSSSssssssss......
Amazing...
Dude needs a girlfriend.
Dude needs a girlfriend.
Who says he doesn't.
Dude needs a job at a "big name" company. And this could be his portfolio.
Pretty amazing, yet simultaneously pointless - I love it!
UGH i had trouble making double doors open with a pressure block! now i feel retarded
It is amazing how difficult something can be that is so seemingly simple on the surface. It gives you a healthy respect for the magic that is modern day electronics.
SSSSSSSSSSSssssssss......
Creeper says, "That's a nice CPU you have there. It'd be a shame if something were to happen to it..." (yes, I realize he was playing on peaceful difficulty)
This is freaking amazing. Nice job dude
There is a free simple 2D simulation version of this feature of minecraft available as a standalone game from "Zach", the originator of "infiniminer", the concept game upon which minecraft was based.
Just go to Zachtronics Industries website and pick it up. It's called "Kohctpyktop".