11 Apr
2002
11 Apr
'02
5:25 a.m.
On Thu, 11 Apr 2002, John Allain wrote:
Just in the interest of getting a good sence of the
problem and it's solution, what is the minimum
number of gates necessary to implement a stored
program computer? I guess the instruction set
would be something like (IF(x=0),JMP,ADD,SUB,MOV)
That's an interesting question. ADD and SUB are pretty high-level
concepts (compared to a minimalist implementation). I guess the minimal
"complete" machine would be a Turing machine.
Was Simon attempting to be this?
It was a complete computer (including paper tape reader, blinkenlights,
toggles, the works). Initially it was a 2-bit machine, and later both the
instruction set and word size were expanded. There was a project for a
drum memory peripheral, but I don't know if it was ever completed. So, it
wasn't an attempt at minimalism as much as it was an attempt to bring
computers to the average guy at a time when they were room-filling "Giant
Brains" accessible to only a few.
Cheers,
Doug