原创 Check these out: 1bit processor and an ultra-cool Turing Machine

My friend Alvin (my co-author on several books) just showed me a rather interesting website that describes a 1bit processor. Since it's a 1bit processor, this little scamp supports only a single type of instruction. Before you read further, if you were doing this, which instruction would you choose to implement?

...tick tock... tick tock... tock tock...

Well, the creator of this little beauty opted for a Copy then Branch-If type of instruction. The idea is that the machine copies the current bit to one address, and if that bit was one, then it branches to a second address.

Click Here to read more...

But wait, there is more, because someone who was commenting on one of my blogs on MicrocontrollerCentral.com mentioned a really interesting article on the BBC Technology website (Click Here to see the original BBC article).

This article describes the "goings on" at the annual Maker Faire in Newcastle, England. It seems that this year there were a plethora of exhibitions to tempt the curious and the geeky – everything from mushrooms that make music to Steampunk Jewelry.

One item that really captured my attention was a mechanical computer that is programmed by the movement of ball bearings.

Students of computer history will recognise this as a Turing Machine, just like the one Alan Turing envisaged and explored in his mathematical paper that kicked off the computer age.
I don't know about you, but I am REALLY tempted to build one of these for myself. I can imagine it chuntering away executing some program here in my office...