Building A Processor

Hello, how hard would it be to create a really basic computer? I'm talking make all the parts from silicon and other metals and plastics and such. Im also talking like 4hz and 4bytes of ram. Like a computer that does 1 + 1 and then beeps the number of times for the answer. Btw, Thats not making the speaker

- Cheers, Daniel

Making everything, how difficult?


Very.


If you're purchasing the silicon and not creating it yourself, you'll have trouble finding a decent supplier for your needs. Most everyone is doing 200mm or 300mm wafers. Your processor circuit doesn't sound like it would need more than a few logic gates; heck, adding two bits requires just one 2-input OR gate, and then maybe you want a way to store the value rather than rely on just the gate output, so add a flip-flop, or better yet a latch with enable so you don't even have to have a clock signal.

Ball-park estimate, that's probably about 10 logic gates, but we'll call it 20 for good measure to account for logic driving the speaker. So, 20 gates, and assuming they're all 2-input gates, that's about 80 transistors, we'll call it 100 for good measure. At industry-best technology right now, they can make transistors as small as 45 nanometers. 100 transistors at this level would be tiny.

The raw silicon would be expensive, and the equipment to process it would be extremely expensive. And really, you could buy IC's that you can link up to do exactly what you want for something this small for not much at all, your register included.

To connect everything you need, wires would be good. Planning on making those yourself too?

I'm not sure what you want plastics for, but have fun with that - building molds and whatnot.




How hard is it?

The short answer: Very, for financial and technical reasons.

You can build basic "computer" like one you described using 50-100 transistors, buzzer, several diodes , several capacitors and battery.
All you need is:
Boolean Algebra link
Logic gates link
digital circuit link
NAND link