NAND-16: a computer built from 277,248 NAND gates

(somethingbig.ai)

25 points | by rossant 1 day ago

4 comments

  • Nurysso 7 minutes ago
    OHH my god this is soo awesome, I wonder how people build such things.
    • Retr0id 6 minutes ago
      They opened their AI agent and typed "make me a 16-bit computer built from NAND gates" and hit enter.
  • monocasa 58 minutes ago
    I was about to say that's a whole lot of gates for not a lot of computer, but then saw that rom and ram are also an array of nand gates.
  • wang_li 1 hour ago
    A nand gate takes 2 transistors. So 554,000 transistors if this were manufactured in a physical device.

    By way of comparison, the Intel i386 had 275,000 transistors.

    • matja 54 minutes ago
      Most of the gate budget here is on SRAM used for system memory and video memory, so not exactly comparable to a i386 which had neither on-die.
    • HarHarVeryFunny 20 minutes ago
      ARM1 was only 25,000 transistors.
    • ohazi 51 minutes ago
      4 transistors for a two-input NAND gate in CMOS.
      • jhallenworld 16 minutes ago
        1 transistor for DTL... certainly CMOS is more relevant.
  • guiambros 1 day ago
    This is pretty sad. Seeing this a couple of years ago would be mind blowing. An impressive technical feat by someone with grit and resilience to painstakingly build this from scratch.

    Today? Meh.

    • LarsDu88 55 minutes ago
      I had the exact same thought. I vibecoded a MOS6502 emulator a few months back in Rust. My Rust skill is weak, and I learned absolutely nothing about the 6502 or CPU design. Had I done it manually, there's also no way to prove I created it without LLM help making the whole exercise less appealing overall.
      • socializer 4 minutes ago
        > there's also no way to prove I created it without LLM help

        You don't need to prove it, that was never a requirement. You can simply say it. The only complication is that there's a fair number of people who, for some reason, really want to pass LLM output as their own. They are present on HN too. But here's another ancient trick to overcome that: reputation. Either the reputation you already have, or reputation you build over time. If you have a reputation as an honest person with genuine interest in software, you really don't have to worry, and you will have audience for your work.

    • Retr0id 7 minutes ago
      Yup. I got excited for a bit, until I loaded the page and saw it was slop. I still would be impressed if someone actually took the time to learn about and implement it for themselves.