A functional CPU built in-game Minecraft using Redstone based on the famous Scott CPU from the book "But how do it know?" by J. Clark Scott.
I knew how basic logic gates work from a very young age. As a child who can build basic circuits from the age of 5, I am deeply intrigued by computing as a whole. As I learned the basics of how CPUs work at school, I cannot stop wondering how the concepts are implemented in actual circuits. I want to build a CPU.
Fast forward to 2010, I encountered a game called Minecraft - a game where you can build anything. I got immediately hooked into the Redstone component of the game. Redstone allows you to build simple contraptions, and I gradually became a decent Redstone builder. I have attempted to build simple compute circuits like adders, but never had the effort or initiative to construct a fully functional computer.
Fast forward to 2019, I encountered the book “But How Do It Know?” by J. Clark Scott. The book aims to teach ordinary people how a computer works in its basics by idealizing and imagining a theoretical CPU from chapter to chapter. To fulfill my dream and to help more people understand how computers work, I started the move of bringing the iconic Scott CPU to Minecraft. Spanning one month in planning and five months in construction, this Minecraft computer is now complete!
The computer preserves the original core design of the Scott CPU while having a personal touch on the IO interface and IO attached devices. It is arranged efficiently unconventionally. Since a signal requires a repeaters to extend the signal, a wire is one way only. So, the BUS must be arranged in a way that all the input to the bus must be before all the output from the bus. I design the bus to revolve around some essential components like the registers. The component is designed to have input on the top and output on the bottom, which minimizes the distance between components and the latency.
If you downloaded the world from GitHub. You will spawn in a platform on the ground in which you will be informed of the basic information. The CPU is suspended in the air to allow 360 access to circuits.
