There’s good news, bad news, and worse news. Of course, your first thought will be to port gcc, which is a great C and C++ compiler (among other things). I have my own variation on this, AXASM, and I’ll talk about it more in the near future.Īssembly language is fine, but you really want a high level language. Assuming your processor doesn’t look too strange and you don’t mind conventional assembler conventions about labels and symbols, you might consider TDASM or TASM. There are quite a few options for portable assemblers. This is about midway between stealing and building from scratch. If so, what do you do? You could try porting infrastructure. Or you could be like me and just want a computer that models the way you think better than any commercial alternative. Perhaps you have an idea about how to minimize processor stalls. Maybe you want to experiment with strange instruction set architectures. In general, though, the appeal to developing your own CPU is to make it your own. Of course, sometimes, people just want to emulate an old machine, and that can be fun too. What good is a clone CPU? Presumably, the designer wants to use that particular processor, but wants to integrate it with other items to produce a system on a chip. But that means your CPU has to be compatible with some other available CPU (like OpenSparc or OpenRisc) and what fun is that? Still, the Internet is full of clone CPUs that work this way. The easiest way to get infrastructure is to steal it. Unless you have a lot of free time on your hands or a big team, you are going to have to consider how to hack some shortcuts. A debugger? What about an operating system?Įach one of those things is a pretty serious project all by itself (on top of the project of making a fairly capable CPU). Assembly language coding gets tedious after a while, so maybe you want a C compiler (or some other language). If you are working on a big machine, you might even want a linker. Machine code is error prone so, you really need an assembler. In extreme cases, custom CPUs don’t have any infrastructure and you program them in straight machine code. Many custom CPUs, for example, don’t run interactive operating systems (or any operating system, for that matter). Although you might be more productive than I am, you probably need a certain amount of sleep, and so you may want to consider if you can really get it all done in a reasonable time. That’s a big enough job that I haven’t done it. I suppose the holy grail would be to bootstrap your custom CPU into a full-blown Linux system. Not to trivialize the attempt, but the real problem isn’t the CPU. I’ve done several CPUs over the years, and there’s no shortage of other custom CPUs out there ranging from pretty serious attempts to computers made out of discrete chips to computers made with relays. MacSpice offers you the possibility to access the Spice electric circuit simulator from your Mac: the app provides support for most of the basic Spice functions, but also includes fixes, improvements, and optimizations.You want to build your own CPU? That’s great fun, but you might find it isn’t as hard as you think. Learning tool that can be used to analyze and test the performance of electric circuits of various complexity levels To help you make the most out of the MacSpice capabilities, the developers also provide a comprehensive user guide that provides details about all the parameters assigned to the built-in models and devices. The tests can be performed for different temperatures, and MacSpice is applying the Spice algorithm to converge a solution. MacSpice is able to perform different types of analysis: DC, AC Small-Signal, Transient, Pole-Zero, Small Signal Distortion, Sensitivity, or Noise. Comprehensive Spice simulator that can handle various analysis modes Within the MacSpice console you get to visualize all internal variables, and choose to change their value: this way, you can effortlessly simulate different situations. When you open the utility for the first time, you will be able to see a list of useful commands: you can load new circuit files, execute analysis, edit the source, or draw the results for different variables values. The MacSpice main window is represented by a console like window that allows you to manually input various commands. Powerful electric circuit simulator featuring a console like user interface To help you get stated, the developers also provide a collection of example circuits that you can analyze on your own. The simulator is able to handle circuits that include resistors, different types of sources or switches, semiconductor devices, inductors, transmission lines, and so on. The utility is based on the Berkeley Spice 3f5 simulator. MacSpice is a simple yet powerful macOS application that is able to analyze and simulate the activity of an electric circuit, regardless of its complexity.
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