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Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to We built an 8-bit CPU as 2nd year EE students

Hi! me and my friends together built an 8 bit CPU implemented in Logisim purely from scratch. The control unit of this system does not implement the generic microcode ROM or any kind of RAM. This was made purely from discrete logic gates and coded the system to run different programs. key features: Custom 16-instruction Harvard ISA, 8-bit fixed format, 4 general purpose registers Hardwired control unit built entirely from AND/OR gate logic matrix Dual-phase clocking to eliminate race conditions Bootstrap Control Unit that cold-boots via ROM-to-RAM transfer Early-exit conditional…

A team of second-year electrical engineering students designed and built an 8-bit CPU from scratch using Logisim, simulating the hardware entirely with discrete logic gates. The system features a custom 16-instruction… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

  1. 1H1

    This is a 16bit CPU+Minicomputer from pure 74 series logic. It has user/kernel modes, virtual memory, prioritized IRQ's and DMA. It has a full C compiler and a unix-like OS. It's still in development.

    2023 · sol-1.org · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    The core question: how did HP's scientific calculators actually work at the gate level? That rabbit hole led to building one from scratch. The architectural decision everything else follows from: a decimal calculator should store numbers as BCD — one decimal digit per 4-bit nibble. A standard byte-oriented CPU (Z80, 6502) fights that layout constantly. So I designed a small custom CPU in Verilog where 4 bits is the natural data width and memory is nibble addressable. What the project covers: - Custom CPU: Harvard architecture, 12-bit ISA, 8-state execution FSM, hardware stack guard with a…

    May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3
  4. 4

    A digital logic simulation written in C. Contribute to rzscheck/logic development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5IA

    Hey HN, I am making an 8-Bit CPU in Logisim and blogging about it.t's nothing fancy, really simple, unoptimized dumb CPU for sake of learning. I am no electrical engineer, I am just a self-taught dude who has programming as a hobby and wanted to dive deeper into abstractions. So here it is, so far I wrote 2 parts: [links redacted] I welcome any and all critique and feedback, as I can be wrong about everything for sure.

    2017 · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    A bit-serial CPU written in VHDL, with a simulator written in C. - howerj/bit-serial

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    I built a tiny 8-bit CPU simulator in Python to better understand how computers work at a low level. It visualizes registers, memory, and instructions in real-time, so you can actually see each operation as it happens. You can write simple assembly code and watch how the CPU executes it step by step. The project is mainly for learning and experimentation, but I’d love feedback or ideas for improvement.

    Oct 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    I built a new 8-bit CPU in VHDL from scratch (starting from the ISA). I felt that most educational soft-cores hide too much behind abstraction, eg. if I can do a+b with a single assignment that calls an optimized arithmetic library, then why did I learn the ripple carry adder in the first place ? And why did I learn flip flops if I can do all my control logic with a simple PROCESS statement like I would with a programming language ? Of course abstraction is the main selling point of HDLs, but would it work if I tried to keep strictly structural and rely on ieee.std_logic_1164 only ? Well, it…

    Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9IM

    Building a 10BASE-T Ethernet transceiver (receiver and transmitter) with discrete logic chips

    2024 · qdiv.dev · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    A while back I wrote a CHIP-8 emulator (which is considered the Hello, World! of emulators and is more accurately a virtual machine since historically CHIP-8 was an interpreted language running on top of the COSMAC VIP to make game programming easier). But a few months ago I got really interested in embedded software, so decided it would be neat to port my emulator to a STM32 MCU and design a console around it as a learning experience, since CHIP-8 never existed as a physical system. I didn't know much about embedded software when I began, and even less about electronics, but I managed to…

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    An educational puzzle game. Solve a series of tasks where you build increasingly powerful components. Starts with the simplest logical components and ends up with a programmable computer.

    2018 · nandgame.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    I built ChipBuilder to make computer architecture more approachable through interactive puzzles. You start with basic logic gates like AND, OR, and NOT, then gradually combine them into adders, multiplexers, memory, an ALU, and eventually a complete CPU. Once you've built the hardware, you can write assembly programs that run on the processor you created. The game is inspired by courses like Nand2Tetris, but everything runs directly in the browser with a visual circuit editor, simulations, and progressively harder challenges.

    Jul 2026 · select.supply · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Tiny assembler for 8086/8088, able to run over DOS for 8086/8088 machines. - nanochess/tinyasm

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    A pretty simple Operating System for my High School Project - aswinmohanme/ultronOS

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    A multitasking monolithic Kernel based x86 targeting Operating System written in C# from scratch aiming for high-level implementation of drivers in managed environment. - amaneureka/AtomOS

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Hi HN, I’m Dvir, a young developer. Last year, I got rejected after a job interview because I lacked some CPU knowledge. After that, I decided to deepen my understanding in the low level world and learn how things work under the hood. I decided to try and create an OS in C and ASM as a way to broaden my knowledge in this area. This took me on the most interesting ride, where I’ve learned about OS theory and low level programming on a whole new level. I’ve spent hours upon hours, blood and tears, reading different OS theory blogs, learning low level concepts, debugging, testing and working on…

    Oct 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Micro Kernel / Bootloader for Ben Eater's 6502 Computer - janroesner/sixty5o2

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    DAN64 is a open software and open hardware project to build an 8-bit microcomputer using an AVR microcontroller.

    2015 · usebox.net · its alternatives →

  19. 19SF

    5 years ago, I made a derivative of SAP-1 (mainly inspired by Ben Eater) on breadboard with few improvement and called it MSAP-1 (https://github.com/mehrantsi/MSAP-1) I made my own very primitive Assembly language and a simple Arduino programmer (https://github.com/mehrantsi/8-bit_CPU_Programmer) where I could load my programs onto MSAP-1 and even Debug them (https://github.com/mehrantsi/8-bit_CPU_Debugger). After that I started worked on the second version of it (https://github.com/mehrantsi/MSAP-2) by adding…

    Jul 2026 · msap2.mehran.dk · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    CHIP-8 console on FPGA. Contribute to pwmarcz/fpga-chip8 development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2018 · github.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21BA

    I am a Dutch high school student and last year I had to do a large project of my own choice. Together with two other guys I decided to do a project about digital logic. We had an ambitious plan: building an 8-bits computer. At that time I started learning programming and I already knew some HTML and CSS. So we decided to not build a physical computer, but one running in a self-built simulator. I was going to build the simulator, the other guys took care of the computer. I was hard, our school hadn't taught us anything about computers and programming so we had to learn everything ourselves.…

    2017 · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    * OPEN TO CONTRIBUTIONS * NandToTetris is a course which has you build a full computer from: Logic gates -> Chips -> RAM -> CPU -> Computer -> Assembler -> Compiler -> OS -> Tetris All this is done via software defined hardware emulation. I'm building an emulator for this entire stack in C. How is my approach different to other projects that build emulators? - No external dependencies (so far) - Start with a single software defined NAND gate in C - EVERYTHING is built from this base chip - Don't use certain programming utilities: boolean logic operators, bitwise logic operators etc Instead…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    GitLab Community Edition

    2014 · gitlab.brokenpipe.de · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Yet Another Forth Core... Contribute to inforichland/yafc development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2014 · github.com · its alternatives →

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