Number Systems and Boolean Algebra: The Two Ideas Under Everything
Every value your programs have ever touched — an integer, a string, a floating-point price, a JSON blob, this sentence — was, at the bottom, a pattern of high and low voltages on …
Digital Logic and Computer Organization (Nand2Tetris + Theory) covers: Number Systems and Boolean Algebra, Combinational Circuits and the ALU, Sequential Circuits and State, The CPU, Caches and the Memory Hierarchy. Year 2, Quarter 5. Includes 12 exercises and 3 projects.
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Every value your programs have ever touched — an integer, a string, a floating-point price, a JSON blob, this sentence — was, at the bottom, a pattern of high and low voltages on …
In the last lesson you had gates: AND, OR, NOT, and the universal NAND. A gate is not a computer. This lesson is the jump from "logic" to "arithmetic" — the moment where a handful…
Every circuit you built in the last lesson had amnesia. Feed it inputs, it produces an answer, and the instant the inputs change, the old answer is gone with no trace. That's fine…
This is the lesson where the computer turns on. You have an ALU that computes (lesson 2) and registers that remember (lesson 3). What you don't yet have is anything that decides w…
Lesson 4 told you a small lie to keep the story clean: that when the CPU reads from memory, the value just shows up. It doesn't. Main memory is dramatically slower than the CPU — …
- [ ] N2T Project 1: Boolean Logic — Build Not, And, Or, Xor, Mux, DMux from NAND gates - [ ] N2T Project 2: Boolean Arithmetic — Build HalfAdder, FullAdder, Add16, Inc16, ALU - […
- [ ] N2T Project 3: Sequential Logic — Build Bit, Register, RAM8, RAM64, RAM512, RAM4K, RAM16K, PC - [ ] N2T Project 4: Machine Language — Write Mult and Fill programs in Hack as…
- [ ] Extend the Hack ALU to support multiplication — Design the circuit, implement in HDL - [ ] Analyze pipeline stalls — Given a sequence of MIPS instructions, identify all RAW/…
- [ ] Complete Nand2Tetris Projects 1-5 — Build an entire computer from NAND gates: logic gates, ALU, memory, CPU, and computer; run test programs on your hardware
Build logic gates from NAND (Project 1), arithmetic chips including ALU (Project 2), and sequential chips including registers and RAM (Project 3). These are the official Nand2Tetr…
Write programs in Hack assembly (Project 4) and build the complete Hack CPU and computer (Project 5). At this point you have a working computer built from NAND gates. (~10 hours)
- [ ] Milestone 1: Nand2Tetris Project 1 — All logic gates from NAND - [ ] Milestone 2: Nand2Tetris Project 2 — ALU and arithmetic chips - [ ] Milestone 3: Nand2Tetris Project 3 —…
- [ ] What is a NAND gate? Why can all other gates be built from NAND? - [ ] What is the difference between combinational and sequential circuits? - [ ] Explain how an ALU works a…
13 lessons. Read in order; spiral back when you need to. By the end you'll have used the core ideas twice — once on the abstract, once on something you'll meet at work next week.