So I've been toying with this idea for a mod based on designing CPUs. Conceptually, it would bridge the gap between basic redstone circuits like in Redpower and a full blown computer (like in Redpower...).
A word of warning, the stuff I'm talking about is seriously advanced - as in I-just-finished-a-senior-level-computer-architecture-course-at-Princeton-and-I-want-to-play-with-some-of-the-stuff-I-studied advanced. Some of the basic stuff - designing a simple ALU, maybe hooking it up with a cache (that you designed) and memory system to make a very basic computer - is probably accessible to a proficient redstone engineer.
The ultimate goal of the mod would be to build a fairly modern CPU - something architecturally similar to the early Pentiums, for instance - out of simpler building blocks - functional units like caches, branch predictors, etc., each of which has to be designed before you can use it. Designing a unit would be something like providing a piece of code describing what the unit outputs, given an input, followed by you building the circuit in question, which is then validated through simulation - if, after some number of random tests, the in world circuit's outputs match the results of the code fragment, the circuit is assumed to work, and you will be able to craft a chip. You can then use these chips to make further, more complicated circuits, and work your way to something exciting, like a basic computer. The reason for the chip-validation process is so the server can just use the topmost code description, which is bound to be much, much faster than trying to simulate the whole thing from the bottom up.
Anyway, is anyone interested in seeing something like this?
A word of warning, the stuff I'm talking about is seriously advanced - as in I-just-finished-a-senior-level-computer-architecture-course-at-Princeton-and-I-want-to-play-with-some-of-the-stuff-I-studied advanced. Some of the basic stuff - designing a simple ALU, maybe hooking it up with a cache (that you designed) and memory system to make a very basic computer - is probably accessible to a proficient redstone engineer.
The ultimate goal of the mod would be to build a fairly modern CPU - something architecturally similar to the early Pentiums, for instance - out of simpler building blocks - functional units like caches, branch predictors, etc., each of which has to be designed before you can use it. Designing a unit would be something like providing a piece of code describing what the unit outputs, given an input, followed by you building the circuit in question, which is then validated through simulation - if, after some number of random tests, the in world circuit's outputs match the results of the code fragment, the circuit is assumed to work, and you will be able to craft a chip. You can then use these chips to make further, more complicated circuits, and work your way to something exciting, like a basic computer. The reason for the chip-validation process is so the server can just use the topmost code description, which is bound to be much, much faster than trying to simulate the whole thing from the bottom up.
Anyway, is anyone interested in seeing something like this?